"The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight,
but no vision."
---Helen Keller
Visual Impairments can mean a number of things. If you are visually impaired it doesn't necessarily mean you are blind, it could mean you are blind or have impaired vision. A person who is totally blind can not see light or
anything else. Some people use different things to help with their visual impairments by using adaptions such as glasses, Braille, seeing eye dogs, canes, and adaptive computer technology.
There are many devices such as screen readers, computers and many other inventions that were made and still being made to help people that are visually impaired. There are many inventions for computers that make other technological
devices then usable to the Visually Impaired - and can change their lives
forever.
Braille
Louis Braille of Coupvray, France invented Braille.
While he was at school Braille wanted to read but could not always have someone to read to him. So he invented a reading technique for blind people, which was a modification of "Ecriture Nocturne," a code made for
the military by Charles Barbier for soldiers to read at night when there was no light.
Braille is a system of raised dots that a blind person can read with their fingertips. There are two grades of Braille; grade one and two. Grade one is a little bit harder but will teach the person the basic letters and short words. Grade two is a combination of letters that
forms a word. For example, the word "Him", is HM. This allows the person to read the Braille faster.
There are many machines that coordinate with the use of
Braille, such as the Braille typewriter, a machine that reads the text and
prints it out in Braille, and there are many libraries that now carry Braille
books. There is also Braille printers that allow computer files to be transformed
into Braille, even graphics.
Since Braille was invented it has come a long way and is now helping visually impaired people have greater access to the non-visually impaired world around them.
To learn the Braille Alphabet click on the link below and open your mind.
The Braille Alphabet
Seeing Eye Dogs And Canes
Seeing Eye dogs and canes are used more for helping people
get around from place to place. A Seeing Eye dog is specially trained to
help a visually impaired or blind person get back and forth from work, school,
or even to the neighbor's house. The dogs go to a special school where they
learn to obey traffic lights, veer the person out of the way of poles, and
help him/her down steps. They wear a harness and the owner holds on to it
and tells the dog where to go. Many people like seeing eye dogs for their
ability to get the person where there going pretty fast. Then again, some
people dislike them because if the person wants to go somewhere new, the
dog might not know how to get there. Seeing Eye dogs help people get where
they're going though they are not for everyone.
Canes are like Seeing Eye dogs, in that they are mobility oriented but the person uses it by swinging it back and forth to tell if objects are close by. The cane is
one of the earliest forms of getting around for a blind person and still
is widely used today. Over the years we will have new technologies for blind
people but I still feel that the cane will remain one of the leading forms
of transportation for Visually Impaired people.
References
Braille, American Federation of the Blind, Retrieved: June 28, 1997 from the World Wide Web. http://www.igc.apc.org/afb/brail_ed.html
Schlagel, D.B (1997)Braille Gifs,[Internet].
Available:
http://disserv3.stu.umn.edu/ALTFORM/ [1997, July 11].
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