[blindkid] Elementary School iPad Experience

[DrV]

We have also run into all sorts of accessibility issues & it seems like we
are constantly trying to find ³work-arounds².

California¹s idea of an electronic textbook for a BrailleNote is
functional enough that we still want access to it, but it is a huge
stretch to call it accessible, is FAR from an equivalent experience of
sighted peers, & is certainly not an adequate replacement for a hard copy
embossed textbook or workbook.

I am certainly a proponent of technology & am a firm believer in its
potential benefits.

That being said, as a parent it is frustrating to hear educators nearly
always proclaim accolades & what amounts to flowery rosy one-sided
presentations of the wonders of iPads & such, with virtually no
acknowledgement of the real problems vi & braille-reading users,
especially the younger students, & those with no functional vision face. I
realize things are getting better, but the true reality is that at this
point there are still significant shortcomings related to the software
(including VoiceOver), pairing of hardware, & the lack of training that
most of the teachers (vi & gen ed) have in blindness technologies, not to
mention the lack of training of our kids that many parents share.

There exists a huge gap between what should be & what isŠ


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On 1/28/13 10:43 AM, "Richard Holloway" <rholloway at gopbc.org> wrote:

>Interesting link. That plan mentions iPads (and similar tablets) as well
>as laptops, or some combination of the two as potential solutions.
>
>I would like to think that they would plan ahead enough to use accessible
>source material, but I'm inclined to mention that here in Georgia, our
>county has gone to a number of web-based text books for at least a couple
>of years now. We have not been overly impressed with the result.
>
>The school sounded sort of excited for Kendra at first because it would
>offer her access. Turns out that really isn't the case. Sure, the web
>site reads aloud, but JAWS cannot manage the site content, and her Apex
>is entirely useless to access the sites. They did load at least one
>electronic text book onto her Apex last semester. Turns out they managed
>not to provide any page numbers at all in the book-- a rather important
>oversight. All Kendra could so was search for a unique passage to jump to
>the right section. It was really frustrating, and use of this text was
>quickly abandoned.
>
>Back to the web access for text books-- there's no way for Kendra to
>access the buttons to select playback. We can start playback for her, but
>the reading stops at fairly random locations and needs sighted assistance
>to restart. Reality is she shouldn't even need our help to start reading
>at all. Any typical, sighted 10-year-old can open a text or go to a web
>page and click start with no help at all. Most importantly (at least in
>our case) is the fact that JAWS doesn't see the content as accessible
>text, so there is no braille access on a braille display.
>
>Reading and listening are two different kinds of learning. Sighted kids
>with electronic access to these materials have access to read or listen
>in many cases. They also have full access to photos and illustrations.
>With present technology, tactile access to graphics and photos is pretty
>much nonexistent for a web site. Even worse. many of the web sites go out
>of their way to limit ways to capture and adapt graphics. Best case,
>there is some sort of caption or alternative description to say, "This is
>a photo of a statue of President Lincoln", or the like. Then again, with
>conventional texts, we often find non-text content to be ignored or at
>best, very minimally described.
>
>I have also tried to capture text and move that to a more accessible
>situation for Kendra from these web textbooks. The sites have generally
>disabled that option, presumably to guard their copyright? Apart from
>some absurd workaround like screen capture to OCR, I see no solution, and
>we're not going to deal with hundreds or thousands of screen captures of
>multi-columned text and try to convert e-books to the text which should
>already be accessible to begin with.
>
>In our case, we make a point of getting copies of the texts in both
>braille and print whenever possible, though sometimes they are (we are
>told) simply not available. My assumption is they will become less and
>less available in the future as well. If you're working with braille and
>print copies at the same time, you're already in a confusing situation
>with page numbers. Electronic breaks with web-based materials, combined
>with trying to be in a physical location by a computer, and a braillenote
>(etc,.) plus print and braille books, and sometimes a brailler and an
>abacus or two, (etc.) seems to make this transitional state between the
>print/braille materials and the electronic realm an interesting
>logistical challenge.
>
>Does anyone know who or what regulates, or at least guides accessibility
>in terms of electronic text books?
>
>On Jan 28, 2013, at 12:44 PM, DrV wrote:
>
>> One of the topics I heard on the way in to work today was that LAUSD is
>> thinking about providing tablet devices to all 650,000 students in the
>> district. I googled & here is the link to an article on the subject:
>> 
>>www.dailynews.com/news/ci_22437047/plan-supply-lausd-students-apple-ipads
>>-o
>> r-other 
>> 
>><http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_22437047/plan-supply-lausd-students-app
>>le
>> -ipads-or-other>.
>> Needless to say, this will affect blind & vi students too.
>> EricV
>
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