Students with blindness and low vision (BLV) are less likely to choose mathematics as a subject in the senior secondary years which may negatively impact future employment opportunities. Using a longitudinal qualitative methodology, three interviews were recorded with a student who is legally blind over a six-year period. Findings suggest that…

Serious games have a great potential to help people developing new skills or improving previously existing ones. Deaf and blind community face considerable challenges and difficulties regarding to the acquisition of skills in literacy. The design of serious games to meet the needs of the target groups where the deaf and blind people are struggling…

In order to accurately assess the English language proficiency of special populations of English learners, student assessment programs must maintain the comparability of standard and modified assessment formats, allowing for equivalent inferences to be made across student classifications. However, given the typically small size of special…

Virtual reality applications for blind people in smartphones were used to make virtual visits in advance to unknown spaces; these need to include a set of cognitive and sensitive interfaces that allow users to use their other sensory capabilities to understand information about their environment and facilitate the interaction with the application,…

This keynote address was delivered by Dr. Cary A. Supalo at the 2015 Training Workforce and Development and diversity conference which is one of the divisions that is part of NIH's general medical sciences. This conference was attended by over 500 program directors from all of the T32 sponsored projects in 2015. This presentation discussed the…

The article is an invited presentation given by Dr. Cary A. Supalo to the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois annual state convention that was held in Chicago, Illinois on Saturday, October 28, 2011. The remarks were slightly modified for the "Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities."

The number of visually impaired people is increasing year by year. Although attention has been given to the needs of people with disabilities, most of the discussion has focused on social welfare, while talk about assistive technology for people with disabilities is rare. The blind need training courses for reconstruction and rehabilitation.…

This conference presentation examines concept development for congenitally blind students. It presents current research on best-practice for teaching this population. Examples of strategies to reinforce understanding of body concepts, spatial awareness, and positional language, while promoting mirroring, self regulation, and purposeful movement to…

This paper updates the efforts to educate blind students in higher education in the digital age and describes how to support the development of mental models in learning through tactile learning and 3D-printing technology. It cites research documenting a drop in Braille literacy along with the growth in use of digital technologies by blind…

Awareness about students with learning difficulty brought us to inclusive learning environments. The acceptance was to build collaborative atmospheres in the class. Unfortunately, when teachers are not enthusiastic and adequate to develop the interaction, the inclusive learning environment never occurs. This conclusion bases on this studies…

To take a physics course blind students must be assisted using teaching methods and aids adapted to their own perception capabilities. Touchable objects are very important for them because they have huge difficulties to visualize the third spatial dimension. However, appropriate resources and methods for blind students are not yet available. In…

A longitudinal study over a period of 12 months was conducted to assess the process of adjustment of adults to blindness and the factors that influence that adjustment. The visual impairment of the seven subjects took place from 5 days to 8 months prior to the study. Methods of data collection included observations in natural settings,…

Carl Augusto, currently president and executive director of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), describes his personal and professional experience with the National Library Service (NLS) for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and the talking books program. Topics discussed include AFB's history with its own talking book program founded…

The study assessed the extent to which the presence of gaze direction affected sighted raters' perceived evaluation of the competence levels of elementary-aged visually impaired children. Sighted individuals (N=160) were randomly assigned to view one of four randomized videotapes of two visually impaired children without gaze direction…

The experiences of a home counselor for a blind infant intervention program are summarized. Discussed is the role of four areas in successful programming: (1) exposure, or the need for hands-on experience with the world to understand cause/effect and promote imagination; (2) experience of things in such a way as to provide realistic associations…