This document discusses assistive technology for people with sensory impairments. It begins by providing statistics on visual impairments globally. It then defines sensory impairments as reduced ability in vision, touch, or hearing. It describes the main categories of visual impairments as low vision and blindness. The document outlines various assistive technologies for low vision, blindness, hearing impairments, and tactile impairments, including screen magnification software, braille displays, hearing aids, speech recognition, and more. It emphasizes that assistive technology can help overcome sensory impairments.

1. Assistive Technology
for
Sensory Impairments
By:
Arifa V. Ryan-Charles
October16, 2012

2. Did you know?
•Globally, about 285 million ppl were visually
impaired (39 million are blind).
•120 million ppl are visually impaired because of
uncorrected refractive errors.
•90% of VI ppl live in developing countries.
•Around 19 million children are VI (1.4 million will be
blind for life)
•80% of all visual impairment can be avoided or
cured. (WHO: Fact Sheet N 282, June 2012)

3. What are Sensory Impairments?
Sensory impairments refer to the
reduced ability or lack of ability
in using one or more of three
senses: vision, touch, and
hearing. Includes blindness,
deafness, deaf-blindness etc.
www.uw.edu/doit/Video/wt_sensory.html

4. Visual Impairments
Visual impairments are conditions in
which individuals experience
significant loss of vision.
Visual impairments consist of two (2)
main categories:
1. Low vision
2. Blindness

5. Visual Impairments
Low Vision: This is a condition in which an
individual’s vision cannot be fully corrected
by glasses. (http://www.webaim.org)
Blindness: This often refers to a complete
lack of vision. People who are legally blind
may have some useful vision.

6. Hearing Impairments
• Hearing impairments include partial or
complete hearing loss.
• The Hard of hearing have a mild hearing
loss.
• People who are deaf have no useful
hearing ability.

7. Tactile Impairments
• Nerve damage associated with diabetes
may result in peripheral neuropathy.
• This condition is manifested in numbness
or a lack of sensitivity in limbs, including
fingertips.

8. Assistive technology for low
vision
1. Screen Magnifiers/Enlargement
• Screen magnification - software that
focuses on a single portion (1/4, 1/9,
1/16, etc.) of the screen and enlarges it to
fill the screen.
• Software that zoom in a small area of the
computer screen to allow people to see it
more clearly.

9. Examples of Screen Magnifiers
• ZoomText Magnifer/Reader
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htJ5jZnk6ZQ
• MAGic Screen Magnification Software
• iZoom Screen Magnifer/Reader
• SuperNova Reader Magnifier
• Claro Lightning Magnifier & Reader

10. Print Magnification Systems
• Merlin elite
• DaVinci
• Closed circuit Televisions (CCTVs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSIaWtsFNsE&feature=related
• Nemo Portable Digital Magnifier
• Senseview Duo
• Pebble Portable Digital Magnifier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWO0TSZUSdQ&feature=rel

11. Input Devices for Low Vision
• Large keys keyboard
http://www.google.ca/search?q=large+keys+keyboard&hl=en&prmd=imvn
• Home row indicators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKv2YpCuDFs

12. Assistive Technology for Blindness
• Screen Readers: (HAL and SuperNova,
JAWS, Window-Eyes & VoiceOver).
• Refresherable braille Displays.
• Braille Embossers
• BrailleWriter/Slate & Stylus (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rM7Tam-hrA)
• Tactile Image Enhancer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8tTFVMTf7o

13. Assistive Technology for the
Hearing Impaired
• Hearing Aids
• Cochelar Implants
• Captioning
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
The speaker wears a headset microphone that is connected to a
computer, the ASR program “recognizes”his/her voice and
translates the spoken message into text that is displayed on a
monitor. Eg: Dragon Naturally Speaking, Via Voice,
icommunicator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmDVEvJYQV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=U0bjx01GEAM&NR=1&feature=endscreen

14. Assistive Technology for the
Hearing Impaired
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=424C3Ix1H1o&feature=related
• Visual Alert Signalers
Alarm Clock With Flasher: A light flashes when the alarm
goes off
Shake Awake Travel Alarm Clock: Placed under pillow, this
vibrates and/or sounds to wake you up.
Door Beacon: When someone knocks at the door, the
beacon flashes.
• Infrared Systems
• Conference Mate

15. Assistive technology for Tactile
Impairments
• Speech input software (Dragon
Naturally Speaking, VoiceXpress)
http://www.humanware.com/en-canada/home

16. Just Imagine
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=nCKAJ_H0rPw