A series of experiments were conducted to study variables affecting the alignment of blind pedestrians at street intersections. In the first two studies blindfolded sighted students, serving as adventitiously blind people undergoing mobility training, learned one of three strategies: no concrete strategy, tracking, and tracking and compensation.…

The authors review their work on the role of attentional variables, such as in exploratory hand movements, selection and pickup of haptic shape information in the education of blind students. Efforts to design a technology to permit unobtrusive study of hand movements during braille reading and to link observed differences in scanning to reading…

The paper reports on two experiments in Braille learning which compared blind and sighted subjects on the immediate recall of haptically-examined Braille symbols. In the first study, sighted subjects (N=64) haptically examined each of a set of Braille symbols with their preferred or nonpreferred hand and immediately recalled the symbol by drawing…

The paper offers suggestions to improve today's climate for technological aids for the blind, describes some currently available aids and some future possibilities from research, and addresses the question of programed implementation. (Author/SBH)

The study involving 96 undergraduates with no previous experience with braille investigated variables (such as size of the braille symbols) affecting the learning of braille. Data were analyzed in terms of the number of correct responses, item difficulty, and error patterns. Visual Ss did better than haptic Ss on the regular bralle items but not…

The assessment profile of a 9-year-old blind child with normal intelligence is presented to illustrate activities useful in remediating lags in reasoning. Described are six activities from a module entitled "The Long and The Short of It", which provides the student with opportunities to use arbitrary units of measure and thereby…

This description is divided into four sections: (1) Danish library legislation for the blind and physically handicapped, (2) the history of library service to the blind, (3) the existing state of library service to the blind and physically handicapped, and (4) the future of such services. Ways to improve the "have-little" status of the…

The paper reports on a study aimed at developing: (1) a compendium of environmental sensing skills and behaviors, (2) a set of selection procedures and performance trials for matching blind candidates with electronic travel aids, (3) a standard evaluation of pre- and post-training performance, and (4) training guidelines. The materials are noted…

Described is the development of a programed instruction manual in mobility and orientation skills for multiply handicapped blind children. Detailed are procedures involved in creating a developmental scale to assess five basic areas: use of a seated guide, seating, trailing, protective skills, and route travel. Results are reported for a pilot…

The paper reports on a study of Braille learning in which subjects (N=96) were provided with information about the structure of the Braille alphabet and expressly instructed to use that information during learning. A previous experiment had found that merely providing subjects with information about Braille alphabet structure had no effect on…

The paper reviews problems and challenges in serving blind children in mental retardation facilities. Incidence figures for institutionalized blind multiply handicapped children are cited, and problems of assessing such residents are seen to include uneven development and lack of standardized evaluation measures. The impact of ward management and…

The paper reports on a program to change behaviors of six blind multihandicapped adolescents with severe behavior disorders at the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. Examples are drawn of the program's effects on a 17 year old male, Joe. Program principles include reduction of stressful situations for the students, expansion of…

The study involving two visually impaired developmentally delayed infants, investigated the role of child/adult interaction in eliciting intentional (goal-directed) communicative behavior. It was hypothesized that child/adult interaction would increase the child's awareness of how his or her actions influence adult behavior and would lead the…

Three papers by the president of the National Federation of the Blind are presented. The first, "A Definition of Blindness," examines definitions of blindness, asserting the advantages of a functional or sociological definition over a physical or medical definition. He cites harm in legal distinctions between partial and full blindness and between…

Introduces new technologies that provide instant translation of print materials in three general categories: optical to tactile conversion of print, optical to braille conversion, and optical to speech. Talking books, voice indexing, new braille technologies, print to braille, and optical print enlargement are highlighted. A list of sources is…