Our team spent the past few weeks working with teachers and students at the Carroll Center in Newton, Mass. During the month of July, the Carroll Center offers several week-long summer programs to visually impaired children in Massachusetts and surrounding areas.
Thanks to Greg Donnelly and Nancy Sharon for organizing this event. We wanted to verify that our initial suite of curriculum-based games enabled the students to practice their braille literacy and orientation & mobility skills. Equally important, the students found the games were lots of fun. They were improving their skills without realizing how much they were learning.
Charles Warren, an orientation and mobility specialist there, says he was impressed by how engaged the group of 15 students were when we demonstrated games like “Barnyard,” where children use a finger to drag an animal in a called out direction, like “downward” or “north.” He says the blending of education and entertainment is unusual in the world of assistive technology, and the kids enjoyed them. “You can’t trick kids,” he says. “They’re either into it or not.”
If you are a teacher or specialist, or you are the parent of a visually impaired student and would like to find our more information, please visit us at: