By Sandra Guy
The 87-year-old Hadley School for the Blind has won a technology award for
its online classes that enable teachers, family and peers of the blind
and visually impaired to learn Braille at a faster pace.
Andre Lukatsky, the Winnetka school's director of computer services, developed the courses with curriculum designer Ruth Rozen and Web specialist Steve Lee. Lukatsky used Java software to enable the online course work to simulate a Braille writer -- an $800 machine similar to a manual typewriter -- that teachers and others use to write in Braille.
The online simulation gives the look and feel of the machine free as part of the Hadley School's most popular courses, "Introduction to Braille" and "Contracted Braille," a Braille shorthand. (Online course applications can be found at www.Hadley.edu.)
A simulator that students use to practice typing in Braille highlights misspelled words in red.
The online programs enable students to e-mail their work to teachers, and receive e-mailed feedback within 48 hours, compared with the two- to three-week wait for the paper-based system of mailing course work back to Hadley School.
Debbie Siegel, an instructor at Hadley School, said the quicker feedback is "a huge advantage" that helps students keep up their newly learned Braille skills.
The simulators are easier to use than the Braille machine because when a student makes a mistake, he doesn't have to take paper out of the roller, erase the mistake, and try to line up the paper again, Siegel said.
The two Braille-writing courses are among 17 now online of the Hadley School's 90 correspondence classes. The e-Hadley initiative aims to put at least five courses online each year.
The online course work won the school's first technology award -- the 2007 Runner-Up Lumity Technology Leadership Award sponsored by consulting firm Accenture. The award included a $2,500 grant, a donation of Microsoft software and a one-year membership with Lumity, including $2,000 worth of consulting services. Lumity, formerly the IT Resource Center, is a Chicago-based non-profit group that provides financial and technological help to other non- profits.
Frank Modruson, chief information officer for Accenture and one of the contest judges, said he was impressed with the course work's ease of use and feedback system.
"It's a lot of fun to see what organizations can do with relatively little money -- the passion around a project, the energy that goes into it and the impressive achievements that result," he said.
The Hadley School got its start when William Hadley, a high school teacher who lived on the North Shore, was blinded after his retina detached. He worked with a neighbor and ophthalmologist, E.V.L. Brown, to write the first course in Braille. The first courses to incorporate audio for the blind and visually impaired used vinyl records, which were followed by reel-to-reel tapes and later audio cassettes.
The school now serves more than 10,000 students, and employs 80.
Lukatsky, who has led the non-profit school's Web advances for the last seven years, doesn't see the Hadley school's entire course load going online, but trends show students prefer the Web-based classes. In 2006, about 400 students took "Introduction to Braille" online, and 400 took it via printed material, compared with 200 students who took the course online and 500 who took it in print in 2005.
Programs for the blind and visually impaired are slowly making their way into the mainstream.
Handheld devices called electronic Braille readers let the blind feel pin-prick-like letters, and several Web sites use audio to read information out loud.
Macy's Web site, macys.com, has a downloadable tool for the visually impaired that "speaks" the content on the Web site as the user moves his computer mouse over the screen.
"In three months, we've had more than 2,500 clicks on that link," said Peter Sachse, CEO and chairman of Macys.com. "That's not an insignificant number."
Copyright © 2008 The Hadley School for the Blind. All rights reserved.