[nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission Needed

Sun Jun 3 23:58:04 UTC 2012

Yes, and I will be going to my first national convention this year!
Also, Braille+s are being sold all the time, but despite not being 
supported, they are the best PDA out there, especially for reading or 
listening to books... So much so, that the winners of the Bookshare reading 
challenges almost always have a Braille+. The music player on it is 
unmatched as well, there is nothing better than to be able to create custom 
play lists, have your music play on random, go to the name of your artist 
and find all their songs, place songs in the right order when they were put 
out of order by Amazon, increase the speed, navigate through the audio with 
multiple level navigation and store 64 gigs of music and books without any 
external cards. I have around 25 Operas as well as all the albums from about 
15 artists, 600+ full books from both NLS and Bookshare, and I have only 
used 25 Gigs. Not even half way there...
I haven't even touched programming my own programs.
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs
-----Original Message----- 
From: Chris Nusbaum
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 1:39 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission Needed

Were you the opera performance major who won an NFB scholarship
this year?

Chris Nusbaum

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."
2 Corinthians 5:7

Sent from my BrailleNote

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Keith Biggs" <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list"
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org
sent: Sun, 3 Jun 2012 00:30:52 -0700
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission
Needed

Hello,
I'm training to be an Opera singer, but I do all kinds of
stuff...
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs
-----Original Message-----
From: Ashley Bramlett
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2012 10:04 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission
Needed

Brandon,
What is your major? Haven't seen you here til recently.

-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 12:43 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission
Needed

Hello,
If you're a computer programmer, you may not like mainstream
products.
For example I can't stand the victor readers and I'm only getting
an Apex
because it's the smallest 32 celled PDA out there.
But for programming, getting your hands on a Braille+ would be
heaven as it
runs on a Linux operating system and it uses Python in its sours
code.  They
opened up a developer package, so one is able to develop their
own apps for
the BP and the commands are very programmer friendly.
The only thing that I've heard is hard in a computer engineer
class is
soldering the small wires to the different hardware pieces
without touching
anything.
Other than that, programming blind is just as fast if not faster
than
programming sighted.
But really join the program list.
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs
-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Lester
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2012 9:01 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission
Needed

What about contacting these guys, to get your books in Braille,
if
that's what you prefer?
http://www.mbvol.org
Just wondering!
Joshua

On 6/2/12, Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net> wrote:
Hamid,
I'll start by saying  that I graduated from Marymount
university, a
private
liberal arts school, a few years ago.  I combined studies for a
degree as I
did not feel I could handle a full degree in psychology.  At the
time the
stats software, SPSS, was not accessible and I would have faced
other
barriers.  My degree was in liberal studies with focus in
communication and
psychology.
School is challenging at the post secondary level because you do
not have
access to braille.  In public school my Teacher of the vision
impaired,
TVI,
obtained my books in accessible format either audio, braille or
large
print
or a combo of those as well as brailled any handouts the class
received.
Therefore when my sighted classmates got a worksheet, so did I
and I did
not
have to wait for alternative forms of texts as I did in college.
I did
despite requesting electronic formats way in advance of my
classes!
I'm also not too active in NFB so my opinion may differ from
others.  I
know
we want to present a positive image, but IMO we may have to take
it slowly
at the beginning while adjusting to a new school, new major, and
new ways
of
doing things.

Anyway, that said, I wish you success in your
computer science studies.  You might want to do two classes your
first
semester.  Where will you be studying? What country do you
come
from and were you educated there in a mainstream class or school
for the
blind? Do you mind sharing what your vision impairment is? Its
obvious
your
vision loss is new and I'm guessing probably a gradual loss.
Maybe you
have
RP, retinitinis pigmentosa.  I'm visually impaired too, so I
know the
benefits of seeing things where spatial relationships are
involved.
However,
I also was taught braille and use that as my primary medium and
print my
secondary one for reading.
I think by seeing something like say geometry figures or a
diagram of the
heart, I can better picture it than if I learned it just by a
description.
So, for some of us vision impaired people, using it is effective
and we do
not have to use all nonvisual ways.  Because you cannot read
braille
effectively, I think using your vision may help a lot provided
you can see
large print well without fatigue.
BTW, you might be able to use jumbo braille a little bit even
though you
have hand trimmers.

I do not know computer science or math majors so my advice may
be more
general and I'm imagining what might be useful to you
in this program of study based on the little I know of CS.

You are right that getting special equipment will help your
studies a lot.
I use adaptive equipment all the time.  For instance, I love my
braille
note,
a portable PDA from humanware.  In the US, we have a service
that records
books on CD and digital form.  It
is Learning Ally www.learningally.org.
I do not know if they provide service to study abroad students,
but you
might check on that.  Learning ally may have your textbooks in
their
library.
If you choose to use them, you might want to buy a VR Stream and
you can
use
an sd card to play their books.  You could also buy a vr stratus
which
plays
daisy cds.  Both are available from humanware.

These are some other ideas here.  I know you will need a way to
draw things
in your CS studies.  They use a lot of flow charts and also if
you study
computer programming that has a lot of visual stuff too.
You already know about freedom scientific because you use jaws
and
openbook.
If you tell us how you plan to read your books and take notes I
might have
more suggestions.

Let me know if you need or want to know where to purchase these.
The first
four items are available from APH, American printing house for
the blind.
Click on products and then low vision reading and writing to
find these.

1.  bold line paper or bold line notebook; these lines are
easier to see
than
standard loose leaf paper.
2.  writing guides; these are templates which you slide a paper
into and
write between the boxes of the template; good for writing
straight if you
do
not have lined paper.
3.  large print ruler
4.  bold lined graph paper; might help as you draw concepts or
if you take
math classes
5.  a CCTV, it’s a magnifier that you put a paper or book
underneath it and
it magnifies print on the screen
6.  a digital recorder

Other tools for writing or drawing diagrams you can get at
general stores.
You could use Mr.  Sketch markers some.  They are multi clored
and good for
drawing contrasting lines.  You might also use graphic art tape,
which is
in
red and black, so you could see and touch the lines if you used
both
colors.
Crayola also makes some thick markers you might also be able to
see well
and
find useful.

Good luck.

Ashley

-----Original Message-----
From: Hamid Hamraz
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2012 5:54 AM
To: Blind Math ; National Association of Blind Students mailing
list
Subject: [nabs-l] Consultation regarding an Academic Mission
Needed

Dear all,

I am going to start a computer science graduate program in US in
the
upcoming fall.  However, this is my first academic mission after
I got
visually impaired.  The standard load for a semester would be 3
graduate
courses.  On the other hand, as you know, we blinds and VI folks
are
remarkably slower in CS-related assignments like math,
programming, etc.

Now, I greatly appreciate it if experienced people in the list
offer me
suggestions regarding the course load, etc.  Besides, I should
order
VI-related equipment for my workplace well in advance.  So far
I've thought
about these:

1.  A large LCD (+25 inch)
2.  Headphone
3.  Scanner
4.  Printer
5.  Whiteboard (on which I can read single letters and digits or
very large
figures/diagrams)
6.  Software (JAWS and Open Book to which I am very well
accustomed)
7.  An ergonomic keyboard with many extra function keys

Please note that I can not read Braille effectively (mostly
because of
some
very little tremor in my hands and fingers).

If anybody has some other things to add to the list, I'd be glad
to hear.

Look forward to hearing back both your academic and non-academic
advices.

Many thanks,

Hamid
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