>Thursday, October 11, 2007 > >Talking Braille: A new tool to teach blind children > >By Supriya Kumar > >Learning Braille can be a formidable challenge in developing countries. >Supriya Kumar profiles a new device that's addressing the task. > >Imagine picking a hundred blind people at random from around the world. >Chances are that 90 of them would come from developing countries. Of these >90, a large proportion would be living in poverty and only two would be >literate. > >At less than three per cent, the literacy rate among blind people in >developing countries is extremely low, even in comparison with the low >general literacy rate, which is 50 per cent in some countries. > >Often, parents do not see the value in educating their blind children. Even >if they do, children may not receive appropriate attention in traditional >schools. Very few teachers are trained to teach Braille, a written language >for the blind, in which letters are represented by a group of raised dots >that are felt with fingertips. > >But reading and writing Braille is important: it is very difficult to learn >mathematics orally, and Braille is important for the economic independence >of the blind. > >So researchers in the United States have developed a Braille 'tutor', which >tackles many of the issues faced by new Braille learners in the developing >world. > >The challenges of Braille > >Braille is written using an array of different tools, depending on the >available resources. In the developed world, Braille-writers use a six-key >typewriter called a Brailler. At US$600 dollars, these fast and easy-to-use >devices are too expensive for most in the developing world. > >Children in developing countries use a slate and stylus - a writing utensil >- to emboss Braille characters onto the back of thick paper. Embossing a >mirror image from right to left on the back of the page ensures that what >is >written can be read from left to right when the page is right side up. > >To be able to read and write Braille, children thus need to learn not just >each letter in the Braille alphabet, but also its mirror image. >Furthermore, >feedback on whether they've written the characters correctly is delayed >until the page is flipped over. The entire process presents a formidable >challenge to young children learning to read and write. > >Another challenge for learners arises from the fair amount of strength >required to emboss dots onto thick paper using the stylus. > >"Weaker students and small children have problems learning braille," says >Gubbi Muktha, managing trustee of Mathru School for the Blind in Yelahanka, >near Bangalore, India. > >"The Braille slate itself is heavy for the weaker and smaller children. >Holding it is another big problem. In addition to this, holding a stylus >and >putting pressure through it to get the print of the dot is even more >difficult." > >The electronic solution > >Nidhi Kalra, of TechBridgeWorld - a venture of the Carnegie Mellon >University in Pittsburgh, United States - that aims to develop and >implement >technology to aid sustainable development around the world, decided to >tackle some of these issues. > >She asked Tom Lauwers, a fellow student at the Robotics Institute at >Carnegie Mellon University, if he knew anyone who might be interested in >building hardware that could be used with software she had written. > >Lauwers jumped at the opportunity and together they decided to produce a >robust, low-cost, low-power, electronic Braille tutor. They wanted it to be >something that could be used for a long time, whose parts were available >locally and could be replaced using local manpower. > >Their tutor - an electronic slate and stylus - uses affordable electronics >to track contact between the slate and stylus, and text-to-speech software >to provide immediate, audio feedback. > >Kalra and Lauwers are developing the first generation tutor in close >collaboration with the students and teachers at the Mathru School for the >Blind in India. When Kalra took the Braille tutor to Mathru for field tests >in the summer of 2006, the response she got was overwhelmingly positive. > >Interactive learning > >Mathru is a residential school with 45 blind students and eight teachers, >six of whom are blind themselves. Kalra found that after six weeks of using >the Braille tutor, students who previously made frequent mistakes started >writing noticeably faster, with almost no mistakes. > >"Now the small children and weaker students of Mathru are happily learning >Braille as it is easy and also fun learning," says Muktha. > >Even students who were fluent in Braille enjoy using the tutor because of >the audio feedback. Overall, Kalra found that students and teachers seemed >to be writing much more. > >Based on feedback from teachers and students at Mathru, Lauwers designed >the >tutor to feel like the slate the students are used to, by placing a cut-out >of a normal plastic Braille slate over the top of two rows of Braille cells >in the tutor. > >The stylus is also a normal Braille stylus, connected to the tutor by a >wire. In addition to two rows of 16 cells each, the tutor also has four >buttons that can be programmed so the students can interact with the tutor. > >For example, one button mutes the speaker so that advanced users can write >without audio feedback; another button allows students to choose between >writing right-to-left or left-to-right. > >Each alphabet in English Braille is written as a set of six dots in a cell. >The tutor feeds back on both the dot sequence and the letter that the >sequence encodes, thereby reinforcing the sequence to the beginner. > >Further, the tutor provides this audio feedback as soon as the writer >touches the stylus to the slate, removing the need for strength that would >be required to emboss paper. > >The software for the tutor uses a digitised version of a Mathru teacher's >voice for audio feedback, as the children - especially the younger ones - >had difficulty understanding the American accent normally used in >text-to-speech software. > >The tutor can be tailored to address the specific needs of the student >based >on their level of fluency in Braille. The tutor can be adjusted to read out >the position of the dots in the cell, the letter and - for students >well-versed with the alphabet - just the final word or sentence they have >written. > >The tutor has also been useful in diagnosing students' problems with >Braille. Mangala, a student at Mathru, always completely embossed all six >dots of a Braille cell before she started using the Tutor, suggesting that >she didn't understand the concept of Braille. > >But the tutor showed she understood the concept; her mistake was that she >wasn't moving from one cell to the next as she wrote the sequence of >letters. So, for instance, she would emboss dots one and three of a cell >for >the letter 'k', and then, dots one, two, four and five of the same cell for >the letter 'n'. > >Her teachers, who are also blind, realised that this was the case because >the tutor would read aloud the letters she was embossing. > >Work is underway to produce the next generation of the tutor, which could >be >tested later this year. > >Kalra found that students at Mathru were often scared of touching the >original stylus because of the wire that connects it to the tutor, so in >the >new version of the tutor, the stylus interacts with the slate wirelessly. > >Shivayogi Hiremath, an engineer who has undertaken a pilot project to >produce six tutors locally in Bangalore, says that mass production in India >will require some adjustments to the electronics design so that >locally-available materials can be used. > >"All details of hardware and software design will be made open-source. It >should, therefore, be fairly easy to adjust the design if need be, in order >to produce the tutor in large numbers," says Lauwers. > >Hiremath and Anil Biradar, an IBM (International Business Machines >Cooperation) employee in India, helped to get a US$1000 donation from IBM >for the Mathru School, so they can continue to explore local production of >the tutor. > >For now, the Mathru School has three tutors, and is expecting to have some >more available soon, thanks to the grant from IBM. Mathru also plans to >introduce and encourage use of the tutor among potential users outside the >school, once there are enough tutors available. > >All too often, technology used in developing countries is not designed with >the explicit needs of local people in mind. But the Braille tutor appears >to >be a case of technology from the 'bottom up'. The need for the Braille >tutor >existed, and Kalra and Lauwers are successfully providing the technology to >address that need. > >Supriya Kumar is a biologist and a freelance writer from Bombay, India, >currently working towards a degree in public health at the University of >Pittsburgh in the United States. > >Related links:
>TechBridgeWorld >www.techbridgeworld.org/ > >www.scidev.net/features/index.cfm?fuseaction=readfeatures&itemid=658& >language=1 To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
