In my own classrooms I have had a few students with visual impairments, but none of which have been considered "blind." I have found that it is a bit easier to accommodate my preschoolers because they are not yet reading text, and increasing the size of images on a screen or printout is fairly easy and not very time consuming. There are however, students in my school that are legally blind and I have always tried to stay current in my knowledge of assistive technologies incase I ever do have a student with a severe visual impairment in my class in the future. One child in particular that is in my wing of the school uses braille when reading, types on a braille keyboard, and has a braille tactile display to help her access information from computer screens. Another child uses a screen reader and voice commands when accessing information on electronic devices.
This weeks readings had a number of great ideas to assist students with visual impairments to better access materials in digital format, and I was most interested in the article on how to make i-Pads more accessible for students. We recently received a grant for a classroom set of i-Pads and I have not yet taken the time to learn how to make my i-Pads more accessible to all students. Using the tips in this weeks readings I have learned ways to increase text and image size, increase contrast on the screen, enable sounds and alerts, and ways to enable speak auto text.