|
Braille Technology
Braille technology is assistive technology which allows blind or visually impaired people to read, write, or manipulate braille electronically. This technology allows users to do common tasks such as writing, browsing the Internet, typing in Braille and printing in text, engaging in chat, downloading files and music, using electronic mail, burning music, and reading documents. It also allows blind or visually impaired students to complete all assignments in school as the rest of their sighted classmates and allows them to take courses online. It enables professionals to do their jobs and teachers to lecture using hardware and software applications. The advances in Braille technology are meaningful because blind people can access more texts, books, and libraries, and it also facilitates the printing of Braille texts. "Despite the Braille system's universal reach, the National Federation of the Blind estimates that only 10 percent of the vision-impaired are able to read Braille". S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assistive Technology
Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for Disability, people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, or even with assistance. ADLs are self-care activities that include toileting, mobility (ambulation), eating, bathing, dressing, grooming, and personal device care. Assistive technology can ameliorate the effects of disabilities that limit the ability to perform ADLs. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. For example, wheelchairs provide independent mobility for those who cannot walk, while assistive eating devices can enable people who cannot feed themselves to do so. Due to assistive technology, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blindness
Visual or vision impairment (VI or VIP) is the partial or total inability of visual perception. In the absence of treatment such as corrective eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment, visual impairment may cause the individual difficulties with normal daily tasks, including reading and walking. The terms ''low vision'' and ''blindness'' are often used for levels of impairment which are difficult or impossible to correct and significantly impact daily life. In addition to the various permanent conditions, fleeting temporary vision impairment, amaurosis fugax, may occur, and may indicate serious medical problems. The most common causes of visual impairment globally are uncorrected refractive errors (43%), cataracts (33%), and glaucoma (2%). Refractive errors include near-sightedness, far-sightedness, presbyopia, and astigmatism (eye), astigmatism. Cataracts are the most common cause of blindness. Other disorders that may cause visual problems include age-related macular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Braille
Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser. For blind readers, braille is an independent writing system, rather than a code of printed orthography. Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed the braille code based on the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which subsequently included musical notation, in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837, was the first Binary numeral system, binary form of writing developed in the modern era. Braille characters are f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Federation Of The Blind
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is an organization of blind people in the United States. It is the oldest and largest organization led by blind people in that country. Its national headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland. Overview Anyone, blind or sighted, is permitted to join the NFB, but a majority of members in its local chapters, state affiliates, and nationwide divisions must be blind, as must its officers and board members at every level with exception of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children. This structure is intended to ensure that the organization is run by blind people and reflects the collective views of its blind members, the NFB refers to itself as "the voice of the nation's blind." The philosophy of the organization is: The organization's former president, Kenneth Jernigan, said, "We who are blind are pretty much like you. We have our share of both geniuses and jerks, but most of us somewhere between, ordinary people living ordinary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Braille Translator
A braille translator is a software program that translates electronic text (such as an MS-Word file) into braille and sends it to a braille peripheral, such as a braille embosser (which produces a hard copy of the newly created braille). Typically, each language needs its own braille translator. Despite the use of the word ''translator'', there is no language translation. Even in the simplest situation, such as Dutch braille, has complex rules for capitalization, emphasis, punctuation, typographic symbols, and page formatting. Description For the purposes of this article, the word "inkprint" means text prepared for reading by the eye, whether printed, displayed on a screen, or stored in a computer; "braille" means text prepared for reading by the finger, whether brailled, displayed on an electronic device, or stored in a computer. Braille translation software or embedded hardware converts inkprint into braille or braille into inkprint. Usually, someone has inkprint in a word proc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JAWS (screen Reader)
Job Access With Speech (JAWS) is a computer screen reader program for Microsoft Windows that allows blind and visually impaired users to read the screen either with a text-to-speech output or by a refreshable Braille display. JAWS is produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group of Freedom Scientific. A 2023–2024 screen reader user survey by WebAIM, a web accessibility company, found JAWS to be the most popular desktop/laptop screen reader worldwide for primary usage (at 40.5%), while 60.5% of participants listed it as a commonly used screen reader, ranking it second in this measure behind NVDA. JAWS supports Windows 10 and Windows 11 along with all versions of Windows Server released since Windows Server 2016. There are two versions of the program: the ''Home'' edition for non-commercial use and the ''Professional'' edition for commercial environments. Before JAWS 16, the ''Home'' edition was called ''Standard'', and only worked on the home editions of Windows operat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurzweil Educational Systems
Kurzweil Education (formerly Kurzweil Educational Systems) is an American-based company that provides educational technology. Kurzweil Education provides literacy solutions, tools and training for those with learning differences and challenges, or people with blindness or partially sighted. Founded in 1996, the company has pioneered the development of computerized assistive technology. Its headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company supplies two principal software products to its customers—Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000. Kurzweil 1000 is a software which enables a visually impaired user to gain access to both web-based, digital or scanned print materials through its OCR and text to speech features; Kurzweil 1000 software provides easy access to most printed forms and presents them with the fields, labels, boxes, and text areas in the appropriate reading order to enable forms completion via the computer. Kurzweil 3000 is an educational technology, or assistive technol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NonVisual Desktop Access
NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open-source, portable screen reader for Microsoft Windows. The project was started by Michael Curran in 2006. NVDA is programmed in Python. It utilizes accessibility APIs such as UI Automation, Microsoft Active Accessibility, IAccessible2 and Java Access Bridge, to access and present information to the user. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2. History Concerned by the high cost of commercial screen readers, in April 2006, Michael Curran began writing a Python-based screen reader with Microsoft SAPI as its speech engine. It provided support for Microsoft Windows 2000 onwards, and provided screen reading capabilities such as basic support for some third-party software and web browsing. Towards the end of 2006, Curran named his project Nonvisual Desktop Access (NVDA) and released version 0.5 the following year. Throughout 2008 and 2009, several versions of 0.6 appeared, featuring enhanced web browsing, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of Open-source software, open source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open source appropriate technology, and open source drug discovery. Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase ''open source'' became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of other terms, suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Braille Embosser
A braille embosser is an impact printer that renders text as tactile braille cells. Using braille translation software, a document or digital text can be embossed with relative ease. This makes braille production efficient and cost-effective. Braille translation software may be free and open-sourced or paid. Braille embossers can emboss single-sided or double-sided (called interpoint) and can produce 6- or 8-dot braille. Blind users tend to call other printers "ink printers," to distinguish them from their braille counterparts. This is often the case regardless of the type of printer being discussed (e.g., thermal printers being called "ink printers" even though they use no ink). As with ink printers and presses, embossers range from those intended for consumers to those used by large publishers. The price of embossers increase with the volume of braille it produces . Types The fastest industrial braille embosser is probably the $92,000 Belgian-made NV Interpoint 55, fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
