9452881 Oregon State University Information transfer is often a serious problem for students with disabilities in most academic disciplines, but it is particularly severe in science, engineering, math (SEM) and other technical subjects. Students with visual impairments and learning disabilities are frequently overwhelmed by the difficulties of learning, using, and/or presenting equations, graphs, schematic and conceptual drawings, and other non-textual information encountered in SEM. The objectives of SEED are to develop inexpensive easy-to-use computer-based methods and devices to reduce or eliminate the problem with SEM information flow with the eventual result that significantly more students with disabilities can be recruited and retained in SEM education and careers. The initial focus is development of the Audio System for Scientific Reading (ASTER) into a flexible tool for use by people with visual and learning disabilities to read, write, manipulate, and understand SEM literature. ASTER developments are considered to be critical for making SEM materials accessible to students who are visually impaired or who have learning disabilities. The ASTER program currently runs on a Unix workstation using a Dectalk voice synthesizer. ASTER's internal representation of a document is a hierarchical tree that allows the reader to easily change the style in which the document is read aloud and also allows very fine control over where the reading begins and ends. These two controls make audio reading of technical material much easier to comprehend for these students. ASTER will be rewritten in a common version of Lisp (such as CLisp) that run under DOS, OS/2, Linux, and some versions of Unix. Subsequently, ASTER will be rewritten in C++ to make it possible to port ASTER to other platforms. SEED also will collaborate on the development and evaluation of tactile tablets on which raised images (comprised of Dotsplus and figures) can be used to display complex sc ientific equations with each term expandable in audio by ASTER. SEED will recruit talented, motivated university students with disabilities to serve as SEED research assistants in projects. They will be highly visible role models for other students with disabilities; and their successes should increase the confidence of teachers, counselors, parents, and potential employers in the ability of students with disabilities to succeed in SEM.***
