BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE education landscape of visually impaired students of the Cotton Thomas Comprehensive School, previously known as the Special Education Unit, was recently transformed, setting the students in a more advantageous position for excelling and becoming productive members of society.
An embosser and a computer programme called JAWS for Microsoft were recently donated to the school by Jean Quinn. The physical handing over however was performed by Mickey Weintraub and Connie Jagner.
Prior to September 2014, the visually impaired students learned via hearing, in that they would repeat what was spoken to them. After September 2014 however, brail was introduced to the school through a Mrs. Audain who was trained in that field in Jamaica.
The equipment that was donated to the school, as was explained by Weintraub, would revolutionise the student’s mode of learning.
“With the embosser, learning material is fed into it and the brail version is printed so that the children an get real and on-hand experience with reading and learning.
“A visually impaired child without a brail education is going to be restricted all their lives. With this piece of equipment and the software, by the time they are done with school, they’ll be able to become economically and self-sufficient, because they will be able to work the computers.”
He explained that the JAWS for Microsoft programme is interactive and would allow the children equal opportunity to become productive members of society.
“Now when they go on the internet they can do research, they could even type a report and it would speak back to them. They will now have the same opportunity as a sighted child. And this is not only for these students, but for every visually impaired child ad infinitum.”
One of the teachers of the visually impaired students, Vanessa Warner, said her class consists of three children who are totally blind and one whose sight is impaired.
She said with the introduction of brail since last September, the students are already able to identify the letters of the alphabet and some words, adding that with the embosser and the JAWS for Microsoft programme, the possibilities are endless.
“Their main mode of learning was by hearing. We taught them by mouth and they would listen and repeat what they would have learnt. And most of the time we would use simple objects like sticks etc. to teach them to count and so on, but it was very limited.
“But with these wonderful learning tools they would learn more. Instead of us having to tell them all the time, they would explore things for themselves and the learning experiences would be more interactive and more imaginative. We will be able to print stories and other work to give them and they would be able to read it by themselves. They would even be able to do homework, because they can be printed and given to them to take home.”
