For many years, the shortage of Braille teachers in the United States has created challenges for blind students of all ages who wish to read the ubiquitous system of raised-dot text.
In the 1990s, with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), renowned educator and innovator for the blind, Sally Mangold of Exceptional Teaching, Inc., developed the Speech Assisted Learning (SAL) device to counter the shortage. The device broke new ground by providing mathematics and Braille reading lessons, in both English and Spanish, in a flat, notebook-sized tool.
Mangold passed away almost exactly one year ago, but her friends and colleagues have recently come together to ensure that her work continues.
"No matter how wonderful speech is, it is not a substitute for human literacy," said Sara Nerlove, the NSF officer who oversaw the SAL awards. "It was Sally Mangold's dream to open doors for Braille learners wanting to explore fields of science, mathematics and engineering."
The SAL system presented, in a Braille format, the same mathematical concepts and problems that appear in regular print books. Students could run their fingers across Braille text with the confidence that an encounter with unknown words or numbers could be easily remedied with a single press on the paper, a trigger for a pronunciation from SAL. With a second press, SAL would spell the word or describe the mathematical symbol.
More: National Science Foundation
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