World of Education Opened to Student with Visual and Motor Sensory Impairment

For many students with visual impairment, assistive technology such as Braille is a marvellous tool that opens up the world of reading and writing—and, ultimately, education and careers. For 14-year-old Kassandra Soares of Montreal, Canada, however, Braille was not an option. In addition to Kassandra's visual impairment that limits her perception to patches of color; she has motor sensory difficulties including lack of sensation in the tips of her fingers and her toes, which prevents her from using Braille.

But Kassandra is a bright and motivated young woman supported and encouraged by her family, teachers, and lately, a group of Microsoft volunteers, to help her accomplish her educational goals.

Teachers Pitch In to Develop Solution

Kassandra attends Jacques-Ouellette school for students with visual impairment in Longueuil, Canada, where her unique educational needs are addressed. Her special education teacher, Louise Bonneau, was the one who discovered that although Kassandra could not distinguish text—no matter how much enlarged—she could distinguish colors by sight. Bonneau reasoned that if the alphabet could be translated to color, Kassandra could read. So, Bonneau and Kassandra's other teacher, Denis Joncas, pitched in to develop a special color-coded alphabet.

Then, volunteers, teachers, and nearby high school students spent many hours preparing color-coded "books" for Kassandra to read. They produced the large color-coded letters by hand-coloring the letters and gluing them on paper—letter by letter—producing sentences and eventually full books. Kassandra was delighted with the new tool and soon became a voracious reader. But, the work of producing books for Kassandra was very time-consuming and laborious. More innovation was needed.

School computer teacher, Eric Roussel, then devised a way to produce the letters by using the Microsoft Word Auto Correct function. Although these and other improvements to the process were more and more effective, Kassandra's desire for more reading material soon outstripped the available resources for producing it. In addition, she wanted to be able to write, so she needed a keyboard solution as well.

Her support team found the IntelliKeys flat screen keyboard by IntelliTools, Inc. to fill the keyboard need. Kassandra's alphabet could be programmed into the keyboard using the Overlay Maker. They removed the existing interface on the keyboard and replaced it with one produced using Kassandra's color-coded letters. Progress was being made, but Kassandra needed more. At this point there was still a need to manually re-type all text.

Software Solution Developed

That's where Microsoft came in. Approached by Lucie Demers, Director of IT of the Commission Scolaire Marie-Victorin (school board), Microsoft Canada's Jocelyn Hamelin, Education Account Manager, and Jacinthe Robinchaud, Academic Program Manager, set about finding a comprehensive solution for Kassandra. The first step was to inventory the potential solutions. They found no existing solution that completely fit Kassandra's particular needs. So they decided to engineer one. They first contacted Glen Poor from the Windows group in Dublin, Ireland to see if Microsoft could create a font for Kassandra. He informed them that it was impossible since a font doesn't have color, and advised them that the best avenue was a custom development. They then turned to the Canadian partner team, Mina Gharbi-Hamel and John Bristowe, who found a volunteer developer who accepted the task of building the application for Kassandra.

The solution they developed through a collaborative effort by Donald Belcham and Dave Woods from the Edmonton .NET group was a special program running on Microsoft Windows. It translates regular text in Microsoft Word to output displayed in another Microsoft Word file on-screen in Kassandra's special alphabet 14-characters wide. Kassandra can both read and write using the special program. She enters text using her IntelliKeys keyboard.

Fits Microsoft Mission

These collaborative efforts have truly opened the door to education for Kassandra. "This special project is a perfect illustration of Microsoft's mission—to help people realize their full potential through the use of technology," says Jocelyn Hamelin. "Kassandra's thirst for information was limited by her physical impairments, but now she has access to all of the printed material worldwide—just as you and I do." Kassandra, a typical teenager, is now asking for a "chatting" tool to communicate live with others, "We'll see what we can do to make it happen through the magic of software," says Hamelin.