Computers have come along way in helping those who have sensory impairments: vision, touch, and hearing. Sensory Impairments have a variety of effects on people. Each impairment have a range from mild to severe. For example, visual impairments could just mean the person is sensitive to light (mild) or they have a complete loss of vision (severe) (Burgstahler, 2010). Assistive technology can be used to support the effects of the impairment. Finding the appropriate assistive technology depends on the persons needs and goals.
Visual impairment is defined as an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects the child's educational performance (IDEA, 2004). There are several things a person with visual impairments can do to use a computer. They can enlarge the display on the screen to six times as large. Also, they can invert the colors so that the background is black and text is white. This reduces strain on the eyes. There are several speech output and enlargement software as well. Two examples of enlargement software are ZoomText Xtra and MAGic (Burgstahler, 2010). Photo copiers can also be helpful to enlarge printed text.
IDEA defines hearing impaired as an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child's educational performance (IDEA, 2010). Assistive technology for the hearing impaired is not as advanced. Most of the basic applications like Microsoft office do not require you to hear in order to use them. On the down side, many multimedia presentations on the internet do not include captions. The National Center for Accessible Media has resources for developers to add captioning to streaming videos (Burgstahler, 2010).
People that have limited sensitivity in their hands have a very hard time using a regular keyboard and mouse. There are several speech input software that can be helpful. Some are Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Voice Xpress (Burgstahler, 2010). Limited sensitivity can be caused by Peripheral Neuropathy (Burgstahler, 2010).
Resources:
Burgstahler, S. (2010). Working together: Computers and people with sesnory impairments. University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
IDEA- http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/,root,regs,300,A,300%252E8,
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