by Sharon Lovering
The announcement of products and services in this column is not an endorsement by the American Council of the Blind, its staff, or elected officials. Products and services are listed free of charge for the benefit of our readers. "The Braille Forum" cannot be held responsible for the reliability of products and services mentioned.
Beginning in October, the new editor of "Here and There" will be Sarah Blake. Sarah will introduce herself to you in next month's column. Meanwhile, to submit items for this column, you may e-mail Sarah at [email protected], or call ACB at 1-800-424-8666 and leave a message in mailbox 26. Please remember that we need information two months ahead of actual publication dates.
E-Mail List for Diabetics
There's a new e-mail list in town for all ACB members and friends. ACB-diabetics is intended to be an open forum for anyone and everyone who is interested in discussing issues related to diabetes and/or the American Council of the Blind. To join, go to: http://www.acb.org. Find the link entitled Join our E-mail Discussion and Information Lists. Next, locate the "acb-diabetics" link. There you will find a simple form that will allow you to subscribe or unsubscribe as desired.
Participants Needed for Research Study
Mississippi State University's Rehabilitation Research & Training Center (RRTC) on Blindness and Low Vision, in collaboration with the Helen Keller National Center on Deafblind Youth and Adults and the RRTC for Persons who are Hard of Hearing or Late Deafened, is currently working on a five-year research project concerning people aging with vision and hearing loss. This project focuses on people who are visually or hearing impaired who experience a secondary onset of hearing or vision loss resulting from aging.
Older people who experience both vision and hearing loss are often isolated by their lack of access to technology, communication systems, and transportation. This project seeks to determine the primary needs of this particular group of people and the best ways to address those needs to improve their everyday lives.
If you have experienced both a hearing and vision loss and are 55 years or older, we request your participation in our study group. Study group members will complete several surveys and possibly participate in one interview. Only a small amount of your time will be required, and your contribution will benefit not only you but others who are aging with vision and hearing loss as well. Any information you provide will remain strictly confidential.
To participate or to ask questions, please contact B.J. LeJeune or Michele Capella at 1-800-675-7782 or via e-mail at [email protected]. Additional information about the project and a study group application form can be obtained at http://www.blind.msstate.edu/pahvl/pahvl.html.
Federal Student Aid
The Department of Education's Federal Student Aid office provides information on grants, loans, and work-study to help students pay for their post-secondary education. These materials include publications in alternate formats (audio compact disc and braille) for blind and visually impaired students. Students can call our toll-free Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-433-3243 to order braille versions of the "Free Application for Federal Student Aid," "The Student Guide," "Funding Your Education," and "Repaying Your Student Loan." Also available from the center, on audio compact disc, is the "Student Aid Audio Guide," a condensed version of the Braille Student Guide. Students also can visit our web site at http://www.studentaid.ed.gov.
Ultimate Talking Dictionary
Premier Assistive Technology recently released the Ultimate Talking Dictionary, a comprehensive PC-based dictionary combined with a powerful thesaurus that actually reads definitions aloud. The dictionary contains more than 250,000 words, including people, places, slang and common phrases; and it includes a spelling feature; a "power search" feature; a thesaurus; hot-key word lookup; a "zoom" feature that allows users to enlarge the print; word history; and it works with screen readers and magnifiers.
The Ultimate Talking Dictionary sells for only $29.95. You can purchase it online at www.readingmadeeasy.com or call (815) 722-5961.
Headband Sales Support Goalball Athletes
A fundraiser for an international goalball tournament taking place at the end of October will support two athletes, Peter and Matthew McCubbin, to attend the competition as Michigan delegates. Headbands are $4 each. You can get matching ones for your guide dog, too. Call Jan McCubbin at (517) 627-1288. Send your check to 20 W. Mount Hope, Grand Ledge, MI 48837.
Graphical Calculus
The Computer Science Department of the College of Staten Island in conjunction with the Computer Center for the Visually Impaired of Baruch College has designed a Graphical Calculus Course for Blind Students. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation to help make college-level courses accessible to people with visual impairments. This self-pacing course was designed to enable blind students to master calculus concepts without the assistance of sighted readers. Course materials consist of audio presentations of text specifically worded for blind students and supplemented with easily interpreted tactile graphics.
Audio files and graphic files for transfer to swell paper are freely downloadable from our web site. Audio-tactile files for use with a NOMAD touchpad are also available. Or we can supply ready-made plastic graphics sheets. For more information or to view the materials, please visit our web site at http://domanski.cs.csi.cuny.edu/CalculusForTheBlind. Or you may e-mail us at: [email protected] or call us at (718) 982-2350.
Virtual Pencil
Henter Math is pleased to announce the release of its first product, Virtual Pencil. The computer software for interactive access to math is designed for people who are unable to operate a pencil effectively. The product is not a tutorial, but rather a tool that can be used to interactively solve a math problem. The virtual pencil moves to the right spot on the "paper," guided by the user, and inputs the answers that the user selects. When used with a screen reader the numbers and actions are read aloud, or displayed in braille.
Virtual Pencil can be used by the student in tutor mode to learn how to navigate around and solve math problems, with lots of on-line help. In test mode the student does not have the tutor and must know how to navigate, where to read the digits in the intermediate steps, and where to put the answers, just like when using a pencil.
Teachers can use Virtual Pencil to create an assignment or test, password protect it, and then send it to the student via e-mail, save it to a diskette, print it or emboss it in braille. The password prevents students switching from test mode to tutor mode or otherwise changing the assignment. The same file can be printed out for the other students in the class, saving the teacher a lot of time.
The current product handles addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and decimals. Future versions will accommodate higher levels of math, like algebra, trigonometry, differential equations, and calculus. The price is $99. For more information or to download a free demo, go to the web page at www.HenterMath.com.
Office Depot Prints Large Print Books at a Discount
Office Depot recently announced a partnership with the Virginia M. Woolf Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides books on CDs for people with visual impairments through its web site, www.Text-Key.com. Through this partnership, visually impaired customers who have purchased a book on CD from the Virginia M. Woolf Foundation can have a hard-copy version of the book printed at Office Depot stores on recycled paper at a discounted price.
CDs from the Virginia M. Woolf Foundation contain five different versions of one book, in screen-reader friendly and printer-friendly type sizes. Books cost $11.50 each, and may be purchased through the Braille Institute, the Center for the Partially Sighted and Vision World Wide. Office Depot will print the hard copy books for four cents a page; double-sided printing is available at eight cents per page. All books will be printed on recycled paper. There is also a 10 percent discount for any binding that may be required.
Collaboration to Read
Pulse Data International and Benetech recently announced a formal collaboration integrating Benetech's Bookshare.org initiative with Pulse Data's BrailleNote family of products.
This collaboration allows BrailleNote users with a Bookshare.org subscription to browse the Bookshare.org web site using the BrailleNote, select one of the 12,000 books already available from this site and download it directly to the device. Once a user has input his or her user name and password, the BrailleNote will seamlessly unpack the downloaded book to the BrailleNote's bookreader to be read off-line. This unpacking scheme preserves the book's copyright protection.
Bookshare.org has also signed an agreement with O'Reilly & Associates to make digital versions of O'Reilly books available worldwide to qualifying users with disabilities. Under the agreement, O'Reilly & Associates will transfer digital copies of its books to Bookshare.org, which will convert the books into accessible formats and make them available to qualifying subscribers in the US. In addition, O'Reilly has granted Benetech rights to provide the books in accessible formats to qualifying users from other countries, the initial step in a planned expansion into providing accessible digital books internationally.