[Pibe-division] Making a Promethean Board flipcharts (smart board) accessible to blind students

[Dr. Denise M. Robinson]

How many out there are in school districts where a smart board or  
Promethean board with flipcharts are used? These are graphic pictures 
that anyone with sight can easily see, but to a blind student, it is 
empty space. Many paraeducators have to take the pictures and turn them 
into text or braille for the blind student to read. There is the long 
way to do this, typing one character at a time ( as you cannot copy the 
images)  or a fast way.
Here is the fast way. You can download a personal  viewer from the 
company to load on your machine. Open the viewer then the flipchart, go 
to file, then to print. When the print box opens, you will see the "save as PDF" so save it as such. Place a folder on the desktop with these 
PDF files, so they are easy to find, especially if you are going to 
teach the blind student how to do this, and after all, that is what we 
want. Open Openbook or Kurzweil and go to open file. Go find the file on your desktop and have your OCR program open it. After it opens, go to 
launch it into Word and it opens in Word. All the great text is there. 
Now be aware, all those pictures will not translate...they will turn out as a list of letters and symbols, so just go through and delete out 
what was meant for a picture. Now, all that needs to be done is those 
pictures are created 3-D by the para to go with this work.
One huge advantage I have discovered is on test day, the students can use their notes. If the flipcharts are in text format, then the blind 
student can do a quick "find" command on their computer and jump to the 
theorem they need ....actually faster than a sighted student pouring 
through their notes visually. Once they have the theorem, they alt+tab 
back to the exam and continue on answering all the problems.
Now this is just 1 way, but where there is a will there is a way to make the world more accessible
Watch video for more detailed instruction: Smart Board

 
       Denise 
                                                                                                              

Denise M. Robinson, TVI, Ph.D. 
CEO, TechVision, LLC
Specialist in technology, teaching, training for blind/low vision
509-674-1853

Website with hundreds of informational articles & lessons all done with 
keystrokes to educate blind/low vision: www.yourtechvision.com 

"The person who says it cannot be done, shouldn't interrupt the one who is
doing it." --Chinese Proverb

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid: humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.
--Albert Einstein

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
--Walt Disney
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