Web Resources

The PRCVI outreach team attended the Getting in Touch with Literacy Conference in Seattle, WA from November 14-16, 2019. We've prepared an overview of the sessions we attended along with links to presentation notes and resources. Turning on Touch Thinking: From Tactile Discrimination to Braille Letter Identification This presentation by Donna McNear focused on teaching tactil ...

Classroom teachers may have many questions about having a student with a visual impairment in their classrooms. If you're looking for a resource to help guide teachers who have a student with a visual impairment in their class, a new resource has noe become availbale. The online course was developed by Dr. Tina Herzberg and Dr. Penny Rosenblum is available for classroom teache ...

Eye appointments can be a busy and stressful event for both parents and children. With so much going on—doctors who may be new, other medical staff, medical tests, an unfamiliar environment, and possibly a busy schedule with multiple appointments—it can be very helpful, not to mention more efficient, to come fully prepared for what to expect. Teachers of students with visual im ...

More and more devices have been incorporating accessibility features throughout the past decade. First the Mac, then iOS devices, then Android devices, and finally Windows incorporated screen reader and magnification features. Windows made major updates to Narrator, its built-in screen reader, with the release of Windows 8 and Windows 10. And with the latest update to Windows 1 ...

Friday, January 4, was the birthday of Louis Braille and also World Braille Day. This was the first year that World Braille Day was recognized by the United Nations. The #WorldBrailleDay tag was celebrated across social media such as Twitter, with stories about how people around the world use braille and how companies are incorporating braille into products. "Almost two cent ...

Adam and I were discussing Chromebook accessibility recently as part of an outreach visit. Chromebooks, like most modern operating systems, has many built-in accessibility features that may not be obvious. Here's an overview of some of Chromebook's accessibility features as they relate to students with visual impairments. Magnification Chromebooks have several ways of enlargi ...

Webinars can be a helpful resource to learn about technology, especially when they provide detailed step-by-step instructions for how to use programs. Freedom Scientific has run paid webinars for many years, but has recently made archives of these webinars available free to everyone. The previously paid webinars now available for free include: PowerPoint 365/2016 with JAWS ...

We are always keeping an eye out for accessible STEM resources here at PRCVI. Desmos is an online graphing calculator that is accessible to students with visual impairments. Desmos allows graphing of expressions and includes full support for screen readers, including audio feedback for graphs and braille support (both Nemeth and UEB). To get started with Desmos, here are a fe ...

We've created the PRCVI UEB Technical Extension (UEB_TE) course for braillists and braille transcribers in British Columbia who are looking to build their UEB math/technical transcription skill set by working with an instructor via correspondence. For those who are looking for a more self-paced option, check out the UEB Math Tutorial from the American Printing House for the Bli ...

This morning, Jen and I had a great conversation with one of our colleagues around some of the common assessment protocols used during the Learning Media Assessment process. Specifically, we did some preliminary planning for a continuing LMA that Jen and I will be consulting on later this month. The student is at the secondary level and has experienced a decrease in visual func ...