Visual Impairments

To accommodate visual disabilities, including blindness, Donka provides students with any needed software and/or hardware they require to use a computer with independence. Products include screen magnification software, screen reading software, enlarged keyboards, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanning software and hardware, Closed Circuit Television, and even a Braille printer.

Screen Magnification software: ZoomText Xtra- Level 2 is a fully integrated magnifier and screen reader for windows. It can magnify any windows program for 2x to 16x and speak all Windows components, echo typing and read multipage documents. It includes a built-in-test-to-speech, advanced edge smoothing, multiple zoom windows, and component magnification cursor enhancements, color filtering and tracking and speech setting for voice, rate, pitch and verbosity. Who benefits? Individuals who require large print to read, certain colors to enhance reading, and speech output to assist in reading test. Users at Donka include – MS, Stroke, Head Injury, Macular Degeneration. For information on this product contact AiSquared at www.aisquared.com.

Talking Word Processor: is a word processor with magnified text and speech output. Speech options and auditory spell check reinforce letter and word recognition. Intellitalk can be used best with Intellikeys keyboard, and can also be used with switch access. Who benefits? Individuals with cognitive, physical, visual, and speech impairments. Users at Donka include – Cerebral Palsy, Muscular Dystrophy, Stroke, Head Injury, MS. For information on this product contact Intellitools, Inc. at www.intellitools.com.

Enlarged keyboards: Intellikeys is a powerful, easy-to-use alternative keyboard that plugs directly into the standard keyboard port and runs any software that responds to keyboard commands. It comes with various overlays including, arrows, alphabet, basic writing, numbers and QWERTY. The keyboard overlays have features to adjust keyboard sensitivity, repeat rte, and other options like mouse keys and sticky keys. Who benefits from Intellitalk / Intellikeys? Children and adults, developing readers, individuals with impaired motor involvement, speech impairment, and vision impairment. For information on this product contact Intellitools, Inc. at www.intellitools.com.

Closed Circuit TV (CCTV): Optelec Clearview 700 is a computer compatible video magnifier that connects to any IBM/IBM Clone or Macintosh computer. It works as a video magnifier, (by itself) or with a computer with a split screen magnifier. Who benefits? Persons who require large print to read text, and need magnification to see printed images. For information on this product contact Optelec U.S., Inc. at www.optelec.com.

Screen Reading software for Visually Impaired and Blind: JAWS for Windows is Screen Reading Software that works with your PC to provide access to today’s most widely used software applications and the Internet. With its internal, multi-lingual software speech synthesizer and your PC sound card and speakers, information from the screen is read out load or output to refreshable Braille, providing technology to access a wide variety of information, education, and job related applications. Who benefits? Individuals who are bind and visually impaired and have high reading and word processing skills. JAWS is commonly used in the workplace by blind users and requires good memory and the ability to learn and use two software programs simultaneously. For information on this product contact Freedom Scientific, Inc. at www.freedomscientific.com.

Speech Synthesizer – produces voice output. Zoomtext and JAWS have internal speech synthesis.

Scanning Software: OPENBook Scanning and Reading software. OPENBook is software developed for blind and visually impaired individuals to read, edit, and manage scanned images, (Typed text), from books, magazines, manuals, mail, newspapers, currency and other printed material. Once scanned, OPENBook converts material into electronic information to be read aloud by the speech synthesizer and displayed on the screen. OPENBook works with standard Windows menus, dialogs and commands, and comes with a full e-mail functionality through OutLook Express. Includes full editing capabilities, dictionary, thesaurus, spell checker, page insertion, page deletion, page replacement, and book-marking. Who benefits? Individuals who require large print or speech output. Users should read and use word processing. For information on this product contact Freedom Scientific, Inc. at www.freedomscientific.com.

Braille Translation Software: Duxbury Braille Translator is a complete Braille translator / word processor for use by sighted and blind, by those who know Braille and those who do not. It includes built-in Nemeth math translation from spatial math through calculus, MS Word support, Braille graphic file imports, foreign language support and much more. For information on this product contact Duxbury Systems, Inc. at www.duxburysystems.com.

Braille Printer – Romeo Braille Printer is a Braille output printer and has configuration menus accessed through a numeric keypad on the printer. Who Benefits? Individuals who are blind and use Braille, teachers who use Braille. For information on this product contact Enabling Technologies, Inc. at www.brailler.com.

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