By Nidhi Kalra
When the Braille Tutor was being field tested in the Mathru School for the Blind in India, one of our happy surprises was discovering its use as a diagnostic tool – something we hadn’t planned. Since six of the eight teachers at the school are also visually impaired, they often give students exercises in writing braille using a slate and stylus and evaluate their performance based on the end result by reading the braille written by the student.
One of the students who participated in our field study was diagnosed by his teacher as not being able to write braille since his writing usually consisted of a single cell with all the dots embossed, regardless of the assignment. It appeared that he had no conceptual understanding of braille though he had been in braille class for a few years. To the teachers’ delight, this student began writing braille as soon as he was asked to use our tutor. Apparently this student had always been writing every letter in the same cell, thus creating the completely embossed single cell. This was not evident to the student’s teacher because the teacher herself was blind and could only feel the results of the writing on the paper; moreover, the student was unable to communicate well and explain what he was writing.
Because our Braille Tutor is able to interpret and read out aloud each letter as soon as the student finishes writing it, the teacher realized that the student understood how to write braille letters but had not understood that he needed to write each letter in a separate cell. In this way, the tutor acted as a diagnostic tool: it highlighted the student’s unique difficulties and was able to provide insight to the blind teacher.
To see how students and teachers use the Braille Tutor (version 1), please view the following movies:
