Stargardt gave a presentation throughout a March 21 Manistee ISD college board assembly on a number of the items of assistive know-how being utilized within the county to assist college students overcome obstacles to schooling.

Stargardt confirmed the varsity board a braille author which provides college students with low imaginative and prescient or blindness entry to the written phrase.

“It’s funny because I’ll like walk into a school with this and people are like, ‘What is that?'” she stated. “It works kind of like an old typewriter — I try to explain that to some people and they’re like, ‘What’s a typewriter?'”

The braille author is an efficient strategy to get college students began studying braille, Stargardt stated.

“Braille is a code, kind of like shorthand. So there’s a series of dots that stand for a series of things, but it is English — it’s not its own language,” she stated. “… It’s just a representation of English — a code for English. So we start out teaching our kids who are either completely blind or have a degenerative condition or … they don’t have enough vision to be really efficient with print — those are the kids that we work with on the braille writer.”

Once college students get sufficiently old they begin utilizing a conveyable braille show referred to as the Chameleon.

“It’s kind of like a laptop without a screen. Down here is refreshable braille, so these little dots down here is how they read,” Stargardt stated. “… The keyboard mirrors the braille keyboard. They run their finger across that and then they can hit the advance key and a new set of braille comes up and the dots refresh. It’s so cool.”

Stargardt stated the Chameleon can hook up with the web and entry books from a USB drive.

“They can … just pop it in and be able to pull up the content of the book on the refreshable braille display,” she stated. “They just hit space and the next line populates.”

Stargardt stated the Chameleon was a “pivotal” step ahead from the usual braille author.

“I used to have to go and write every single thing,” she stated. “When (students) are first learning (to use the braille writer) I have to write for the teacher what it says at the top of the braille, but here you can plug (the Chameleon) into a printer and it prints out in print. So, they input in braille and it prints out in print so they no longer need (me) to be writing over the top of it.”

Assistive know-how is constructed into many gadgets college students and lecturers utilizing every single day, Startgardt stated. Laptops and tablets embrace speech-to-text, text-to-speech and magnification settings and the presentation software program Google Slides presents real-time closed captioning 

Stargardt stated one thing so simple as a light-weight ball with fins to forestall it from rolling remains to be categorised as assistive know-how.

“If I have … gross motor difficulties — you pick up a standard ball with two hands, but you can pick up this ball with one hand and you can also throw it and it won’t roll,” she stated. “If you have gross motor issues and the ball rolls away and you move slow, or it’s difficult for you to move in general, this ball stays put. That allows somebody to participate in (physical education) class.”

Stargardt stated the ball was only one instance of an merchandise thought-about assistive know-how “even though it doesn’t have a button.” Other examples embrace pencil grips and studying information strips.

“A line guide … is considered a very low-tech piece of assistive technology,” she stated. “… (If a student’s) eyes don’t work well together she uses the line guide as she’s reading and it increases fluency and helps her keep her place while she’s reading.”