What kind of technology is commonly utilized by students who are blind or visually impaired?
As mentioned above, blind and visually impaired students use a variety of software to assist them in the completion of their assignments. JAWS is a very common software for blind students – it literally reads the content of the computer screen aloud by using optical character recognition (OCR) and synthesized speech output. JAWS is increasingly compatible with more programs and websites, especially as more web-designers take a more accessible approach to building their web-based content. JAWS can also be configured to work with a refreshable Braille display, which is essentially a Braille keyboard that can display the information on screen for the student to read in Braille format. Kurzweil 1000 is also widely used by blind and visually impaired students for its invaluable scanning capabilities. A student can get access to printed materials by scanning them via Kurzweil 1000 which uses OCR to determine the content and then display it on the screen. Kurzweil 1000 also has speech output
