This SGER project is to do research characterized as urgent with regard to the availability of or access to data, facilities, and specialized equipment. Specifically, Stanford University take advantage of and build on research recently performed by the Research Assistant on this proposal, Ms. Vera Saliba-Pruznick. As a blind computer scientist, she has both a special interest and a special competence for the research. The area of research is the use of small computers as productivity aids for individuals with disabilities. The research begins from a program to teach students both Braille and typing in Braille on a Brailler keyboard, originally developed by the project Research Assistant during her tenure in the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at the Sand Diego Supercomputer Center in 1989. At that time, Ms. Saliba-Proznick was a senior majoring in Computer Science at the University of California, San Diego. In the REU program, Ms. Saliba-Pruznick took on the problem of the Blind computer programmer as a subject for research. She investigated aids currently available for the blind and visually handicapped. Most of these, she found, require speech synthesizers and relied on sound, rather than touch. She wrote a program for the IBM PC that would teach students to use the home keys of the PC keyboard as though they were the keys of a Braille typewriter. The program can be use by a blind student with the help of either a human reader or a speech synthesizer. Ms. Saliba-Pruznick will continue her research by further developing the program, testing it in a k- 12 school environment, and publishing the results as widely as possible in order to stimulate further research on uses of computers as productivity aids for individuals with various disabilities. The work to be accomplished include: 1. Add quizzes for Grade 2 Braille, not yet incorporated 2. Develop printed and Braille instructional material and documentation for schoolteacher, student, and sighted helper. 3. Generalize the program by making it portable to different computers, in addition to the IBM PC, that are frequently found in school classrooms. These platforms might include the Apple IIe, the Macintosh, and Commodors/Amigas. Additional research would include gathering further information about computer aids for the disabled, with specific reference to blind children.
