Blind Students and Distance Education: Some Experiences with Microcomputers and Synthetic Speech

Abstract

Recent developments in new technology offer many possibilities to assist blind students in distance education. This is particularly true in terms of written communication and where the students’ usual working medium is braille. This paper describes some experiences of blind students at the UK's Open University, who have been involved in the ‘Computing and the Blind’ project which was established in 1979. Particular applications described include braille‐to‐text transcription, wordprocessing and computer programming (in BASIC). In each the approach has been to develop software for a low‐cost, commercially available microcomputer system with synthetic speech as the principal output medium.