The umuahia accessibility outreach meet-up has come and gone. It was indeed an outreach as we reach out to the blind and visually impaired. The venue of the meet up was the school for the blind in Umuahia. And the aim was to reach out to the blind and visually impaired students and teachers to know their experiences as they explore the world around them.
There seems to be a bias in promoting accessibility on Google maps. A lot of local guides while contributing to the Google maps tend to give so much attention to the wheelchair(mobility) accessibility. So this meet up was an opportunity to level things up as we look at another aspect of accessibility - the vision accessibility. We also took a dive into a very important aspect of the vision accessibility, that e - accessibility. The idea is to help us promote an all inclusive accessibility on Google maps.
The meet-up was scheduled to hold on Thursday, February 6, 2020. The initial time was 10 am, but when I visited the school to finalize arrangement for the meet-up the principal suggested 11:30am. She said that 11:30am would be better since it was their break time, so they could have ample time for us. Eventually, the meet-up started at exactly 12 noon, after the students have returned from their break time.
The IT Center
The meet-up began in earnest and our first port of call was the IT center. It is the e - accessibility center for the school for the blind. The e-accessibility center is a solar powered IT hub containing a network of computer hardwares to train the blind students on the use of computers.
According to Mr Emeka, the head of IT of the school, also a blind person e-accessibility means electronic accessibility. And that e-accessibility for the blind and visually impaired involves the use of computers to train and integrate the blind into the society; and to also help them to access information in a digitalized and IT driven world. This is made possible by the use of by the use of a special software with voice prompt installed into the computers. This software reads out instructions to the blind on every step of operating the computer.
The blind and visually impaired students demonstrated before us and with the help of the software were able to boot, use, and log out of the computers. The software also serves as a text-to-speech guide which tells the blind the exact key press or tap on the keyboard. Like the computer read ‘space’ when they press the space bar key on the keyboard. He mentioned other features of e-accessibility like screen color and resolution, character types and sizes, and buttons which help the blind blind navigate and explore the Internet.
The typing pool
From the IT hall we moved we moved on to the typing pool where the blind students are trained on typing with typewriters. The students also demonstrated by typing with the typewriters before us. A sentence was read out to them to type with instructions on adequate spacing and centre alignment. The blind students accurately set the spacing and began to type.
The ease, speed, and dexterity with which they typed amazed me. We asked the head of the typing pool whether there is a brail on the typewriter keys. He told us that the students are specially trained to master the use of their hands. With the touch or feel of their hands they can know the exact key. They can also know the typewriter keys by the sound of the keys. The blind teacher was able to tell us when they were spacing and when they were actually typing the alphabets by the sound of the typewriter keys.
The School library.
We proceeded to the School library from the typing pool. It is a big hall with different sizes of book shelves. The shelves were all filled with books. These were not just books but special types of books produced with brail. Brail is an embossed paper with raised dots which is read by the blind by feeling the fingers across the raised dots to decipher whatever is written.
All the shelves were fully loaded and arranged with these special books written with brail. There were also reading tables and chairs right there in the
in the library.
The School hall
Our last port of call was the school hall were the students and staff of the school gathered for the question and answer session. The students before the question and answer session sang welcome songs and demonstrated on how to read and write on the brail paper. It was an elaborate reception and none of us anticipated this heroic reception.
The School
The school is a special education school for the blind - whether young or old. There are those born blind, others became blind either because of injuries or sicknesses. So, in the school of the blind there are children, teenagers, and adults or the aged depending on the circumstances surrounding one’s blindness. There are also barristers, doctors, lecturers etc who became blind in old age but have come to acquire this special education. The school admission is open to all these categories of people but the requirement is that they must learn to read and write with brail for one year. And some of them
after acquiring this special education are integrated into regular schools, either secondary schools or universities.
The charity
Another major highlight of the meet-up was giving to the school. We also reached out to them through charity. The meet-up ended with local guides donating to the school little gift items for the upkeep of the blind students. Gifts items like toiletries, detergents, and tissue papers were given out. These gifts were well documented and highly appreciated by the school authority.
In conclusion, not everyone who signed up for the meet-up attended. This was anticipated because of the timing as some local guides complained of the time. There is no better time than school hours when the school is in session. The timing eventually paid off as the school authority gave us maximum cooperation. In all it was a plus for vision accessibility and the Google maps as a whole. You can view the photo album here.
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