[blindkid] Ipad only

Richard Holloway rholloway at gopbc.org
Thu Nov 13 05:27:02 UTC 2014


On Nov 12, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Amber Hall via blindkid <blindkid at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> They've already bought the iPad for her. But she's the only one in the school with one. It's not a schoolwide thing right now. And the braille display is one we purchased for home.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone


I would be extremely hesitant to send my child’s personal braille display from home for daily use at school for a number of reasons— most notably that you will need to be able to then supply a replacement immediately at any time the unit is unavailable, or your child will have no display on what sounds like her (potentially) exclusive braille display at school.

If your personal display vanishes or gets smashed by some mysterious student (etc.), the school is not at all likely to pay for repair or replacement. And if a student actually gets caught breaking it, good luck getting $1000 out of the kid's parents to repair your unit, at least without having to file a lawsuit...

Also, it is quite likely that some support issues could arise, where the TVI could all at once be unable or unwilling to support this device. Even if you’re sure your current TVI would NEVER do such a thing, people get reassigned and retire. 

Besides, you’re putting tons of use on equipment you’ll need to pay to maintain and repair, and the last time I checked, it seems like each braille cell that gets replaced on most displays is about $100 per cell to exchange for a refurbished one, so repairs get expensive quickly, and I promise it isn’t a question of IF a braille display will fail, but WHEN, especially with daily use... 

I don’t know about all the rest of the parents here, but my wife and I are required to sign an agreement stating that we are responsible for equipment when it comes home from school, but I can guarantee you that if something goes wrong at school which our child didn’t cause on her personal equipment, there is not the slightest chance the school is going to step in and pay to repair to replace the item. (I’d like to see our school sign an agreement in the other direction, LOL)

That you want to be supportive and work with the school is very kind, but the fact it, schools are supposed to pay for this equipment, and they are supposed to do so with our tax dollars. And if I may be so bold— yes, I get it that some of our kids cost the school districts more than they get for that one particular student, but then again, the bulk of our typical kids cost the system less than they are paid. It works a lot like they way insurance premiums work for car insurance. When an insurance company pays for a repair, it isn’t a gift to the person who gets the check— the damaged party is entitled to reimbursement, and the fact that it generally costs more to pay for a totaled car than the company paying out made from that one policy is just how the system works. School budgets are designed with the knowledge that various special situations will cost more than average. A notetaker is an expense the school system must cover, just like a Perkins Brailler, a teacher’s pay, a cafeteria worker’s pay, or a even a new tire for a school bus when it gets a flat.

As I may have discussed on this list before, it occurs to me that many schools actually save a huge amount of money on Braille transcriptions by greatly reducing the need to transcribe items into embossed Braille by using things like electronic braille (particularly by way of notetakers). A $6,000 or $7,000 notetaker probably seems expensive to most of us. (It does to me!) But, what does the portion of a salary of a Braille transcriber for a single student cost? More than $7,000 a year most likely... And how many years does a typical notetaker last? (Presumably several?) Isn’t it reasonable to deduce that a notetaker is offsetting more than a the cost of ownership for numerous LEA’s simply in reduced transcription expenses?

I’m not trying to present a formula for a school budget here, and sometimes TVI’s are transcribing a lot of the work too— I get that, but I know that we had a braille transcriptionist working close to full-time at our daughter’s elementary school a while back, and the vast majority of her workload was just transcribing for our daughter. (I was told this directly.) A huge amount of my daughter’s work is now supplied electronically. Only a small portion is ever conventionally transcribed now. In fact most of my daughter’s assignments are emailed to her and she emails back the work when it is completed. This saves countless hours of transcribing for the school, and lets our daughter turnaround work (and get feedback) at the same rate as with the sighted students in her class.

My point here is that while this technology seems expensive at a glance, it often is SAVING the school tons of money, and it saves time (and therefore one could argue money) for many people who work with my daughter, and presumably that is a fairly commonplace savings for other Blind students’s schools. If the schools would actually follow the requirement to deal with ONLY electronic texts (web-based, iDevice based, etc.) which are actually compliant with accessibility requirements, they’d be saving even more money, but I’ll leave that for a different thread sometime.

My apologies— I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but it seems really important to discuss this in general— It isn’t supposed to be about cost in the first place, but the irony I see is that while LEA’s tend to react by pulling away from these costly devices when they think they can, they’re really avoiding money-saving solutions. (“Penny-wise, Pound-foolish!")

Our kids are entitled to have tactile access to read and write Braille like sighted kids are entitled to print they can read— be that on paper, in books or on screens, so the school simply must provide some sort of braille solution here— be that embossed paper, a notetaker, or possibly (if the can make it work as well as other solutions and you agree) a braille display that they own and maintain. And yes, no matter what, there will be needs for some conventional embossed braille, as well as tactile supporting materials— charts, graphs, maps, etc. I’m not saying that will ever vanish.

I really think the school / LEA needs to offer some compelling reason for this switch, which I maintain would have nothing to do with things like their budget or their own convenience, because that would be ILLEGAL. 

The best argument I can see (for the school) would be to let tour daughter have technology that is the same as the technology assigned to the other students, which I read is not the case. Another point— since they are not using or supporting iPads for the other students, I’m guessing that means there are no spare units on hand if your daughter’s fails, and also that (unless you can do this at home) there is a strong likelihood that should her unit fail or be lost, there may not be a backup in place. (That may be easily handled with some cloud settings, but to which cloud account would the unit be backed up, being a school machine? What is the plan to keep her work safe and guarantee her access without indue interruption of the iPad is stolen by another student?)

One last point, not to be overlooked, pretty much every IEP I have seen for a blind student indicates the nature of the technology the student requires. Generally, rather than "BrailleNote Apex", or “BrailleSense", it will say “notetaker with braille keyboard and display” or such, but it is very common to specify the needed equipment in a student’s IEP. This is required for all sorts of standardized testing where we live as well. If the accommodations aren’t in the IEP, the cannot be used for required state testing. So surely, I hope that any required accommodations in the IEP are covered by the iPad, if they think it can replace all the rest of this student’s current equipment (or whatever they plan to replace). I know in some cases, notetakers cannot be used because you cannot disable calculation features, but you cannot do that with an iPad either, (as far as I’m aware). The school can’t just arbitrarily ignore what is in the IEP, and you have every right to refuse to sign an IEP with any such changes to which you are reasonably opposed. Make a fuss. Be the squeaky wheel unless you are truly convinced the change is in your child’s best interest. Adding the iPad? Sure, give it a shot, but loosing the BrailleSense? No way.

As others have suggested, I would definitely ask to see their technology assessment which supports a need for this change, but I’d also fight pretty hard to keep a notetaker available and look to the future with thoughts of an accessible computer at school as well— display and all, no matter what they suggest. (A BrailleSense may be a solution for the computer display as well via bluetooth.) Particularly if the sighted students have computer access, your child needs to have the same, but it sounds like the school is thinking that your child can just settle for an iPad to cover all her needs. The iPad solving everything, very simply, seems unlikely to me.

Apologies for the long post and good luck!



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