This article traces the history of books, and reading and writing technology, for the blind through an analysis of collections held in the Perkins School for the Blind Archives in Watertown, ...Massachusetts. These collections include books using embossed text and braille as well as raised figures and other writing systems. The confusion created by competing systems in the United States, especially with regard to Helen Keller’s education, is also considered. The authors establish that if we are to preserve such special collections, we must have an understanding and appreciation of their history and use. The goal of this article is to share information on the challenges of and solutions for preserving and digitizing embossed materials for other archivists and librarians who may have stewardship over similar collections, and to educate readers on how these materials might be used to study the history of reading and writing technology, especially those created for use by the blind.
Introduction:
Reading Adventure Time!, formerly known as the pilot version of the iBraille Challenge Mobile App, is an educational technology tool integrating digital literacy to support braille ...reading and writing instruction for students in 1st–12th grades. Designed to operate on an Apple iPad with a refreshable braille display, Reading Adventure Time! uses gaming strategies to motivate students to improve literacy skills such as fluency, comprehension, writing dictation, and proofreading.
Methods:
The application (app) was developed under a Stepping Up Technology grant (H327S120007), which was disseminated to more than 50 teachers and students. Teachers and caregivers completed a Likert-type scale of technology skills as a pre- and postmeasure. Students’ reading speed, comprehension, and miscues were measured by the app.
Results:
Over 50 participants who used the app showed gains in reading and technology skills.
Discussion:
Students’ reading speeds, as measured by the app, mirror the reading speeds found in prior research (e.g., the ABC Braille Study). The impact on technology skills for teachers, caregivers, and students was much greater than anticipated.
Implications for practitioners:
The study provides evidence supporting Reading Adventure Time! as a supplemental intervention that addresses several reading skills and may be used in conjunction with a total, balanced literacy program.
Thousands of journals adapted for the blind and visually impaired people are currently available all over the world. They can be in Braille, audio formats or large print. Most of them have electronic ...editions, available to people with reading difficulties by means of the most advanced screen readers. The first journal in Braille was Progress. It was launched in 1881 and is being published ever since. The paper gives an overview of the journals in Braille, starting from the first published using this technique, to those that are being published today in the leading international institutions dealing with the issuance of publications for the blind, as well as a review of the journals currently published in Serbia. Some of them are published by the Royal National Institute of Blind People in London and the Braille Institute in Los Angeles. Both institutes offer different types of journals. There are journals specialized for music, information technology, chess, medicine, art, literature. The paper gives an overview of the newspapers issued in France, Australia, China, Japan and other countries.The Russian journal Школьный вестник (School Gazette) was launched in 1938. Its content consists of articles on science, arts, culture, sports and other topics. In addition, it promotes the achievements of the blind around the world in various fields. By means of various tactile models, it tries to conjure up visual art to its readers, so in a number published in 1998 it brought a relief map of the Russian Federation adapted to blind people. Since then in each copy of the journal, readers can get a variety of tactile models that bring visual arts closer to them. The magazine is distributed outside Russia and is very popular among the blind population. Esperanto journals in Braille such as Esperanta ligilo (Esperanto League) and Aŭroro (Aurora) are also very popular among the blind. Some of the most famous journals, such as National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, Braille Digest, Playboy, PC World, Rolling Stone and many others are published in Braille as well.Despite the development of digital printing, no more than a few journals in Braille are published in Serbia. Their quality, publishing regularity and print run are not satisfactory.
•Visually impaired children show an advantage for literal questions.•Use of a non-parametric bootstrap augmented technique and regression techniques.•Visually impaired children show better overall ...performance under both modalities.•Implications for educational materials in Braille script.
Do children with visual impairments outperform their sighted cohorts in reading and auditory comprehension tasks?
We address this question by applying panel regression techniques on a comprehensive sample of 16 children with visual impairments from a Greek special school for students with visual impairments.
By comparing the reader comprehender profile for both children types, we find that the children with visual impairments perform better than their sighted counterparts. The better performance is supported both unconditionally and conditionally on idiosyncratic characteristics, such as age, text complexity, modality, sex and reading ability.
Decomposing the reader comprehender profile into a literal, global and local type of questions we find that the results are mainly driven by the superior performance of the children with VI in the literal questions.
Background
Conventional methods of oral health education (OHE) are not suitable for children with visual impairment, as these methods usually involve visual demonstration with models or ...plaque‐disclosing dyes.
Aim
To systematically review the literature to support the best approach for providing OHE to children and adolescents with visual impairment.
Design
A systematic search of five electronic databases and grey literature was conducted. Randomized controlled trials that compared different OHE methods in children and adolescents with visual impairment were included. The Cochrane risk‐of‐bias tool (RoB 2) was used for the risk‐of‐bias assessment. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations (GRADE) framework was used to determine the certainty of evidence.
Results
Nine randomized controlled trials with a total of 804 participants were included in this review. Seven OHE methods were compared. Seven studies were assessed to be at high risk of bias, one study was assessed to have some concerns, and one study was assessed to be at low risk of bias. The overall certainty of evidence was very low according to GRADE.
Conclusion
There was insufficient evidence to recommend a particular method of OHE as more effective in improving the oral hygiene of children with visual impairment, but combination methods may show similar or better results.
Among children learning to read braille, we asked whether the quantitative kinematics of scanning movements of the reading finger would be related to the proficiency of braille reading. Over a period ...of 12 months, we recorded the position and orientation of the reading fingers of eight congenitally or early blind children. We found that the strength of long-range power-law temporal correlations in the velocity fluctuations increased with performance in braille reading. In addition, we found that the variability of the angular orientation of the reading finger that affects the contact region on the fingerpad was negatively related to braille reading performance. These results confirm that the quantitative kinematics of finger scanning movements were related to functional performance in braille reading. The results add to the growing body of evidence that long-range temporal correlations in exploratory behavior can predict perceptual performance, and that scanning movements that center important tactile information on the small, high resolution area contribute to the pickup of information.
TMS-Crossbars With Tactile Sensing Chithra, R.; Aswani, A. R.; James, A. P.
IEEE transactions on circuits and systems. II, Express briefs,
03/2022, Letnik:
69, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The first stage of tactile sensing is data acquisition using tactile sensors and the sensed data is transmitted to the central unit for neuromorphic computing. The memristive crossbars were proposed ...to use as synapses in neuromorphic computing but device intelligence at the sensor level are not investigated in literature. We propose the concept of Transistor Memristor Sensor (TMS)-crossbar by including sensor to memristor crossbar array configuration in the input layer of the neural network architecture. 2 possible cell configurations of TMS crossbar arrays: 1 Transistor 1 Memristor 1 Sensor (1T1M1S) and 2 Transistor 1 Memristor 1 Sensor (2T1M1S) are presented. We verified the proposed TMS-crossbar in the practical design of analog neural networks based Braille character recognition system. The proposed design is verified with SPICE simulations using circuit equivalent of FLX-A501 force sensor, TiO 2 memristors and low power 22nm high-k CMOS transistors. The proposed analog neuromorphic computing system presents a scalable solution and is possible to encode 125 symbols with good accuracy in comparison with other Braille character recognition systems in the literature. The benefits of analog implementation of the TMS crossbar arrays is substantiated with results of accuracy, area and power requirements in comparison with the binary counterparts.
Young adults with Visual impairment (VI) challenge the dentists' skills and knowledge due to a higher risk of developing oral diseases due to difficulty in attaining good oral hygiene (OH).
To assess ...the effectiveness of ATP (Audio-Tactile Performance) technique and braille versus braille alone in improving OH status of young adults with VI.
A parallel arm, randomized controlled trial was conducted among 70 young adults with VI. Participants were randomly allocated to either test group (braille combined with ATP) or control group (braille alone). A pre-validated braille questionnaire was used to obtain the baseline data followed by clinical examination. OH status assessment was recorded through Gingival Index (GI) and Plaque Index (PI) proforma followed by a thorough ultrasonic oral prophylaxis. Periodic reinforcement was carried out on the 7th day, after 1 month and 3 months. The outcomes were assessed at the end of 3rd and 6th month.
There was an increase in the knowledge scores after 3 and 6 months and attitude scores, GI scores and PI scores after 6 months in the test group compared to the control group and this difference was found to be statistically significant.
The findings of this study showed that a combination of ATP and braille proved to be more effective than braille alone in improving the knowledge and OH status of young adults with VI.
The Holy Qur’ān is the last scripture revealed by Allah. It was revealed for the guidance of mankind and every person has the right to read it whether they are healthy or has any physical disability. ...Visually impaired people hold a special place in this society and Braille is a writing method used by these people. Qur’ān has a special and specific style of writing which is called Rasmi Uthmani. It is an authentic style of writing used for the Holy Qur’ān. This article will discuss whether we can write Qur’ān in Braille or not; as it is one of the debatable issues among the religious scholars. Opinion of different religious scholars will be discussed in this paper.
This article positions braille as a writing system worthy of study in its own right and on its own terms. We begin with a discussion of the role of braille in the lives of those who read and write it ...and a call for more attention to braille in the reading sciences. We then give an overview of the history and development of braille, focusing on its formal characteristics as a writing system, in order to acquaint sighted print readers with the basics of braille and to spark further interest among reading researchers. We then explore how print-centric assumptions and sight-centric motivations have potentially negative consequences, not only for braille users but also for the types of questions researchers think to pursue. We conclude with recommendations for conducting responsible and informed research about braille. We affirm that blindness is most equitably understood as but one of the many diverse ways humans experience the world. Researching braille literacy from an equity and diversity perspective provides positive, fruitful insights into perception and cognition, contributes to the typologically oriented work on the world’s writing systems, and contributes to equity by centering the perspectives and literacy of the people who read and write braille.
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