What types of accommodations are available to blind and visually impaired students?
Unless they are newly blind, most college students will already have developed a range of techniques for accessing visual materials. Not all blind people read Braille, but OALA does have a Braille printer available for any individual who wishes to make use of it. Increasingly, blind and visually impaired people are making use of adaptive technology. They make use of devices such as talking calculators, computer programs with speech-output such as JAWS or Kurzweil, and adapted electronic writing tablets with speech-output which make taking notes easier. Some students may also use a note-taker in class, usually a fellow student who takes particularly detialed notes or types their notes on a laptop. In same cases, a reader may retype or scan handwritten notes so the student can utilize screen reading software and listen to the notes through a computer.
