RECENT ADNAVES IN TEACHING SCIENCE TO THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED: THE VISIONS LAB

David Schleppenbach
Director, VISIONS Lab at Purdue University
1393 BRWN Box 88 West Lafayette, IN 47907-1393
Phone: (317) 496-2856 FAX: (317) 494-0239
Email: engage@purdue.edu
http://www.chem.purdue.edu/facilities/sightlab/index.html

Web Posted on: December 12, 1997

The Purdue University VISIONS (Visually Impaired Students' Initiative ON Science) Lab is dedicated to improving opportunities for the visually impaired to study advanced scientific, mathematical, and engineering (SEM) material at the college level. It is composed of three separate divisions: a production facility that produces educational materials for the visually impaired, a research group whose purpose is to design and develop new and better technologies for use by both the blind and the sighted, and a development group, to help disseminate new solutions into the adaptive community. The combination of these three parts into an integrated whole has led to some exciting advances in teaching SEM to blind and low-vision students.

The VISIONS Lab Production facility is dedicated to the large-scale production of educational materials for visually impaired students at Purdue University. The primary job of the facility is to convert existing educational materials into alternative format, on a course-by-course basis. Alternative formats include braille, tactile graphics, raised print, large print, and audiotape. In additon, special educational enhancements are provided to visually impaired students such as three-dimensional tactile models, model kits, tactile posters, and more.

At the beginning of each semester, the VISIONS Lab staff meets with each student and their professors in a case conference moderated by the Adaptive Programs Division of the Dean of Students Office. At this time, explicit plans are formulated as to the extent of material to be converted into alternative format for the student. This meeting also gives the students a chance to air their educational concerns while at the same time affording professors a much-needed sense of relief from the admittedly increased workload associated with educating the visually impaired. Technological advances have done much to cut this production workload to a reasonable level; indeed, the cost of educating a blind science student at Purdue University has dropped to only about 2-3 times the cost of educating a sighted student, and will continue to drop.

The production lab uses a combination of standard and custom software to produce high-quality braille and tactile materials. For example, the literary braille translators of Duxbury Systems, Inc., and the tactile image hardware of Repro-Tronics, Inc., play a vital role in the creation of educational materials for the blind. The VISIONS Lab has also developed custom software that teaches braille to the sighted, converts print equations automatically to braille, teaches raised print to the blind, automatically converts photographs to tactile graphics, creates tactile diagrams that follow VISIONS Lab standards, and much more. The VISIONS Lab also has custom hardware such as Chemistry model kits, biological 3-D models, modified laboratory equipment, and more, all geared towards educating the visually impaired.

The production lab consists of a hierarchy of employees, most of which have had no prior experience with the blind. The braille production supervisor oversees "team leaders", one of which is in charge of each course being transcribed. These team leaders are typically graduate students with field-specific knowledge. Underneath the team leaders are the undergraduate work force, which does 90% of the transcription. One of the VISIONS Lab staff is dedicated to the training of new employees, a process that takes about 2 weeks, starting with an undergraduate with no experience and ending with a skilled production specialist. This short training time is due mainly to the specialized software that makes braille and tactile graphic production so easy. Adjunct production staff include quality control staff (proofreaders), model-building staff, custom design specialists (for model kits and posters), and even a scientific illustrator for difficult diagrams.

The custom VISIONS production methods, called Standard Operating Procedures, have not only cut the cost and training time associated with braille production, but also allow for an incredibly high volume. During the Fall semsester of 1996, the VISIONS Lab produced over 10,000 tactile diagrams and tens of thousands of pages of braille. This material covered over seven separate courses including graduate-level Biochemistry, General Biology, General Physics, Calculus, Communications, and English. In addition, the VISIONS Lab has prepared extensive materials for Organic Chemistry, General Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Genetics, Spanish Linguistics, Spanish Literature, and many others. The VISIONS Lab has also worked on textbook preparation and has even prepared a braille-and-tactile version of the MCAT medical school admissions test.

The VISIONS Lab research staff has been just as busy as production. Typically, the research staff focuses on solving problems directly related to production. This sometimes involves predictive planning and anticipation of future needs. Although the specialty of the research staff is software, the group also has a state-of-the-art research facility with many different kinds of adaptive hardware.

The most exciting recent advance in the research lab has been the development of a context-sensitive math translator. This program allows the automatic translation of both embedded and displayed equations into either Nemeth braille or speech. In addition, the literary portion is also translated using the Duxbury Braille Translator for Windows, allowing seamless one-step translation of any mathematics-containing document. For many documents, the entire translation processed is reduced to merely highlighting the mathematical parts of the text (to indicate to the computer what is math and what is not) and then hitting the translate button. The resultant formatted braille file is then ready for embossing. This is a welcome change from the days of hand-transcription of math documents.

The lab has also developed a series of fonts to make learning and using braille easy for both the sighted and the blind. These fonts included Grade II and Nemeth learning fonts, which indicate the print meanings of the symbol immediately beneath the braille dots. The set also includes proofreading fonts, which convert braille to print characters so that the sighted non-braille reader can easily proofread a braille document. Raised print fonts are available to teach raised print to the blind, or for use by non-braille readers. Many other fonts are included, covering foreign languages, science, and other various ideas. These fonts and translators, along with most of the VISIONS Lab tools, are available from either Repro-Tronics, Inc., or dusxbury Systems, Inc.

Another software project involves the automatic conversion of photographs to line drawings, in order to make tactile graphics. This is especially useful in the Biological Sciences, since photomicroghaps and anatomical illustrations are often quite complex. This software, compatible with most major graphics packages, allows input files to be processed with a special filter that eliminates background noise and sharpens significant lines. Although the process is not 100% perfect, and does require user input, it can be a terrific timesaver when producing materials for a biology course.

The research lab is involved in several hardware projects as well. One exciting project is the development and testing of a virtual reality device for the visually impaired, in collaboration with General Reality Company. This device, which consists of a head-mounted display and associated electronics, provides the user with a greatly enlarged image that appears to float in front of the user's face. Since the viewport window moves with the user's head motion, the user can explore the entire virtual screen in a natural way. This enlargement system has shown to be superior to traditional methods such as screen enlargement software or CCTV's in VISIONS Lab tests. Possible interfaces with the device include computer screens and video cameras, so that a user could access a computer, read a blackboard, or navigate around campus with the device.

Another VISIONS project is to develop a new kind of refreshable braille display. The research staff has developed a new, solid-state solution to braille display design that is cost-effective, reliable, and compact. These new displays may drastically change the way that blind people interact with print materials and graphics. Two types of displays are currently being developed. The first is a flat, two-dimensional pad that allows the reader to read a full page of braille or a tactile graphic. The second is a three-dimensional array that can create surfaces and shapes. Both devices interface with a computer via a serial port, and will work similarly to traditional one-line braille displays. These displays will allow blind levels to reach new levels of access with graphical user interfaces and the like.

The VISIONS Lab development staff is responsible for taking all of the materials produced by the research and production staff and making them available to the general public. This usually involves packaging and organizing of materials meant for internal use in a format applicable to many different kinds of students. The goal of this group is to recover the costs of educating Purdue's blind studetns by selling the materials developed for those students. Curently, the VISIONS Lab has licensed products to such companies as Repro-Tronics, Duxbury, Sighted Electronics, and Los Olvidados, among others.

One example of the development team's work is the many tactile posters produced by the VISIONS Lab. These posters are large-format tactile graphics produced on Flexi-Paper (TM). The topics covered include the Periodic Table of the Elements, Mitosis and Meiosis, Plant and Animal Cell Structure, the Food Pyramid, and many others. These posters make it possible for blind students to have the same reference materials at their fingertips as do the sighted.

Another development project is the creation of model kits. The lab has developed custom tactile kits for Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics. These kits are consistent with VISIONS Lab tactile standards, and allow both the sighted and the blind to create interactive tactile graphics. These kits are essential teaching tools for such topics as Organic Chemistry and Cell Physiology, since they allow a blind student to construct and demonstrate the progress of chemical reactions or cellular interactions to a professor, and vice-versa. In addition to these model kits, stencil sets are under development to allow blind students to create tactile graphics on their own using the Thermo-Pen (TM) of Repro-Tronics. As with the model kits, tactile diagrams created in this fashion are consistent with the diagrams produced by the production lab. These kits and stencil sets are fantastic tools for one-on-one teaching of educational concepts to the blind.

Finally, another interesting development project is the creation of modified LEGO (TM) sets with braille and print. In collaboration with Los Olvidados, Inc, the VISIONS Lab is developing several custom sets of Tack-Tiles (TM), which are LEGO (TM)-compatible blocks with both braille and print characters. These blocks can be used to form words and phrases, and thus to teach braille to both the sighted and the blind. The VISIONS Lab fonts are used in conjunction with the existing artwork of Los Olvidados to create VISIONS font-compatible braille learning blocks. Current sets include Grade II Braille and Nemeth code, and future sets will encompass Spanish, German, French, and specialized topics such as Chemistry and Biology. The sets are excellent for use as model kits for teaching science, and can be used with students of all ages. Like many of the VISIONS Lab projects, they appeal to sighted students as well.

In sum, the VISIONS Lab has made great strides in science education for the visually impaired. The production lab has been able to use custom tools to produce large volumes of high-quality educational materials for the blind. The research lab has worked on developing new software and hardware solutions for educating visually impaired students. The development group has focused on making these advances available to the general public. With continued collaborative efforts between the VISIONS Lab and other similar groups around the country, the future of science education for the visually impaired is quite promising.