THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED should not miss out on education but be equipped to function in a world that is developing, says Elviston Maloney, president of the Association for the Blind and Deaf.
Maloney was speaking yesterday as he received assistive computer software from Clevedon Mayers, presidentof the Barbados Blind Cricket Association.
Mayers said that schools had expressed a willingness to accept blind students but most did not have the software to cater to them. He hoped, therefore, that access to the software would be the beginning of education for the blind and visually impaired. Â
He said that 95 per cent of the material in schools was printed and blind students had to get someone to read it for them, but the features of the software were ideal for the blind.
Yesterday, Mayers also presented 16-year-old Combermere student Janeil Odle with software to assist in her computer use.
She was the first blind student in Barbados to write the Barbados Secondary Schools Entrance Exam in Braille – in 2007.
Mayers donated the Pearl camera and Open Book software which is a reading program that extracts text and can create MP3 audio files. (LK)
