Accessibility

Access to concepts and information presented in graphical form has long been a challenge for blind college students. In the past couple of decades the surge in digitally-displayed content has, well, gone supernova. Thus, blind college students need to develop basic tactile literacy with two- and three-dimensional representations that their sighted peers may have learned much more informally through media such as picture books, television, film, or YouTube. Blind people learn how things look best by touch.

Descriptions are a stop-gap, but only that. Thus, one aspect of our College Prep class’s goal of preparing our students to be savvy and nimble in gaining access to their studies involves taking a look at the kinds of things colleges may throw in front of them and expect them to be able to interpret.

In this part of the world, the BBC’s World Service can be heard during normal sleeping hours on one of our public radio stations. This week our volunteer photographer/videographer Mike Thompson had the BBC World Service on while falling back to sleep in the wee hours when he heard a familiar voice and a familiar name – Poonam Vaidya.

Poonam is from Bangalore, India and was one of our international students. (We always try to have one international student at any given time.) She graduated in 2016. Poonam was one of two blind women interviewed for the BBC program, “The Conversation.” The 30-minute radio podcast gives interesting insights into how blindness is viewed in other cultures.

And thanks for the great plug, Poonam!

Listen to the episode

Here are a few pics from our Science Saturday way back in July! Students rotated between three stations – basic chemistry, a station dedicated to weather, and a robotics class using Lego Mindstorms.

With the first serious fall weather this week – misty rain, leaves turning and starting to litter the lawns and sidewalks – it’s kind of fun to think about how hot it was that day out front with the bucket and the hose!

The point, of course, is to show our students that blind people can do science and – Wow! – it’s even fun!

Quite a few, it turns out.

Staff and students held an Eclipse Party to celebrate and enjoy the 92 percent coverage of the sun today. Students in Home Management prepared a black bean salsa and cookies to start things off about 10:30 this morning as we took time to learn a little more about the eclipse.

Among our tools was the recently published Getting a Feel for Solar Eclipses, published by NASA. It featured tactile (and colorful) graphics of a solar eclipse and a tactile map of the United States depicting the path of totality.

Blind people can and are scientists, even though too often blind youth are discouraged or set off to the side in science classes. With that in mind, each year we conduct a Saturday Science Seminar in conjunction with our summer programs. It’s not exclusive, however, as blind youth are invited whether or not they’re in this year’s summer programs.

So please join us for 3 fun filled and educational sessions in an array of sciences.

When and Where?

Saturday July 22nd from 9:30 am – 3:30 pm. We will be providing lunch so please RSVP to Brent by July 20th. Email him at bbatron@cocenter.org or by phone 303-778-1130 x 222.

Today we start up again after our annual trip to the National Federation of the Blind Convention in Orlando, but the CCB summer students got back in the swing of things yesterday. Since it was our appointed gardening day with the Master Gardeners, summer students and staff got the privilege of bringing in the first zucchini of the season, as well as some other tasy surprises!

Here’s a pic of some of our seniors at Chili’s last Saturday, after attending the audio-described performance of “Mama Mia” at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The Seniors used it as a fund-raiser, raising over $200. They keep a small donation fund going to help out with the expenses of various Senior activities for those who may come up short – things like bowling or movies. The money raised will go into that pot.

For the audio-described performances, blind and theater-goers check out a small FM receiver and headphones over which they receive the live audio description of action on the stage. DCPA offers at least one performance with this accessibility service, as well as sign-language interpreters, for each production.

It just so happens that Graham graduated today, but we’re posting a sample of his Tech Class project. He of course worked with screen readers and other tools in his Tech Class, but as a songwriter and musician with a fair bit of recording experience, he wanted to try his hand at recording and mixing a music track for his final Tech project.

Tricky enough, but it takes some skill and patience with the computer and screen reader to make it work with audio editting software, and then only a few such applications are actually accessible for blind users. So, that’s what Graham did, selecting Amy Winehouse’s “Love Is a Losing Game,” recording vocals and guitar and multiple tracks for background vocals, then editting and mixing … Well, here’s a snippet, just to give you the flavor.

Here’s a shout out to this year’s crew from Rice University in Houston who came to work as volunteers on March 16 and 17. They spend an “Alternative Spring Break” volunteering, first at Winter Park with the NSCD adaptive ski program, and then in Littleton.

We were pleased to host usability testing of Dominion’s electronic voting system on February 13 and 14. Students, staff, seniors and alums took the system for a spin and provided feedback to Dominion’s engineers. We’re especially excited to partner on this project because Dominion will provide electronic voting systems to every county in Colorado for the next 7 or so years. What we share with them will be reflected in our nonvisual accessible voting for a good long while, and we applaud their effort to get our feedback!