It is difficult to read mathematical expressions in braille, whether or not in coordination with text to speech (TTS) synthesis. The researchers in this study investigated the effect of an intervention on the braille readers' performance in reading and comprehending mathematical expressions as well as the braille readers' ability to make…

This is the first of a two-part report of a study on the instruction of children who were learning or using braille and print simultaneously (dual media). It explores the demographic characteristics of teachers and students, aspects of the decision-making process for providing instruction in dual media, and attitudes of students and parents toward…

This article describes the first phase of a project to develop an empirically based scale to help multidisciplinary teams decide whether individual children need to start or continue braille instruction. Teachers and other practitioners (n=225) rated child characteristics on the extent to which they reflected the need for braille instruction, and…

The article presents a two-phase process for use by multidisciplinary teams making decisions on the reading medium for students with visual impairments. The first phase is a diagnostic teaching phase to guide initial decision making. The second phase, continued evaluation, leads to ongoing adjustment of the selected medium or media. (Author/DB)

Points out that in languages in which nouns have a grammatical gender, word recognition can be estimated by gender-decision response times. Notes that although gender decision has yet to be used extensively, it has proved sensitive to several factors affecting lexical access and that this task can be used with linguistic information from other…

Examines the areas of visual and physical efficiency that are important to reading and writing braille or large print and conditions and modifications that may be used to make the selected media effective for individuals who have both visual and physical impairments. (Author/DB)

A diagnostic teaching approach for determining the appropriate reading medium (print or braille) of children with visual impairments is presented. Two checklists are offered for recording observations useful in making decisions during two phases (selection of the medium for beginning instruction and ongoing evaluation of the initial decision). Two…

Discusses variables in the systematic decision-making process for selecting appropriate reading media for students with visual impairments. The article describes a two-phase process for selecting print or braille media. It examines an objective procedure for determining the relative effectiveness of print media, illustrating the procedure with…