Issue: May 2020
Articles appearing in each issue of To Be Continued are abbreviated. To read the complete article, click on the words in blue as they are URLs to the actual original article. Each edition will embrace a theme, include parent specific articles, and a braille literacy piece. Timely articles may appear for the reading audience when it is essential to send out important information. To comment, suggest a topic, or make a correction please send an e-mail to [email protected].
You can spend a fortune for an antique alabaster chess set, or nothing at all for the same basic components homemade from odds and ends of cardboard and crayons. Most important, visual impairment is no barrier to participating in just about every one of the games discussed below.
Card Games
Braille and large-print playing cards are available commercially. If you've learned braille since becoming visually impaired, you can recycle your regular playing cards. Use a braillewriter or a slate and stylus to braille the symbols for card values and suits on any ordinary deck of cards. The value is indicated by the number on the card—for example, a lower case e for the number 5, or the letters j for jack, q for queen, k for king, and a for ace. The letters s for spades, h for hearts, d for diamonds, and c for clubs indicate the suits. Other card games can be similarly adapted for those who read braille. You may not be able to see the hand you've been dealt but the other players can, unless you are consistently careful about how you hold them. The easiest way to deal with that is to use a card holder (two round pieces of plastic between which the cards are inserted and that can be held easily in one hand).
Board Games
You can buy braille or tactile versions of many popular board games, including Monopoly, Scrabble, checkers, chess, and cribbage. The modified Scrabble board, for example, has raised boundaries between the squares for the letters to fit into, braille captions to indicate double- and triple-word or letter squares, braille letter tiles with point values (without the number signs), and a peg board and large-print score sheets for score keeping. For the serious Scrabble player, The Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary is available in braille.
Checkers and other board games can be adapted easily using various materials. For example, standard checkers pieces can be distinguished by a textured surface glued to or a hole through the center of either the red or black set of checkers. Tactile dice are available commercially, although some standard dice already have dots that can be identified by touch.
Computer Games
A variety of accessible computer games are available. Some games can be purchased and installed on your computer. Other games are played over the web. Some games require a screen reader and speech synthesizer to read the screen. Other games come with speech built-in. For a small sample of computer games, visit AFB's Product Database
By AppleVis Staff, January, 24 2017
This free software is similar to Choose Your Own Adventure except it is meant for students with vision impairments. In this podcast, Tunmi introduces us to Suddenly Lost, an interactive adventure novel for iOS with a script that is over 40,000 words alone. We all know that adventure stories can be hazardous to your character's health. In Suddenly Lost, we not only acknowledge that fact - we celebrate it! Each time something unfortunate happens to your character, we call that an achievement. There are over 32 achievements to get in this adventure story, and we challenge you to find them all. Suddenly Lost uses an auto-save mechanism to make sure that you can escape any time you can and pick up where you last left off..
By Katie Rae, May 31, 2017
As a person with a vision impairment myself, I love to play games. I hope the ideas I share here will help parents and teachers get their creative juices flowing with ways to make commercially-made games accessible for our students.
Games: The first thing I did was go through the classroom materials. I decided I could use APH’s (American Printing House) Carousel of Textures. In other games, I used alphabet and number stickers, and tactile shapes—all from APH. I also used the braillewriter and common classroom objects.
Procedure: Cut out different colored paper from the Carousel of Textures, ideally keeping the colors the same (e.g. red textured paper on red pieces on the board). Make sure each one is tactually different from the others. Use hot glue or super glue to glue textures to the game board. Put Velcro on each space, including Start, Safe Zone, and Home (or whatever is relevant to a specific game). Make sure these are labeled with the color and corresponding name.
To adapt the pieces, you can go to any thrift store and change out the pieces so each color has their own unique piece. Another option is to use common classroom objects, such as paper clips, straws, pipe cleaners, etc. Braille each card. Because braille takes up so much more space, summarize what the player needs to do, or make your own cards.
Battleship: Battleship is a great game to teach children how to graph coordinates. How can a teacher or parent make this game accessible for children with vision impairments? Well, we found a way. My husband adapted this game. He used hot glue to mark all of the red “hit” pieces, and left the white ones blank. Along the top and left side of the board, he placed the braille numbers and letters. Because the space is small, all the extra stickers except the braille had to be cut off. My younger students who are new to graphing absolutely loved this game!
By Matthew Shifrin, June 2012
My first encounter with LEGO came when I was four years old. My parents bought me a Duplo train. Duplo is the larger and more child-friendly brother of LEGO. I had great fun rearranging the cars, stacking them, and connecting the people and freight pieces in various ways. My introduction to real LEGO came a year later. Lilya was driving me home from a music lesson when suddenly she pulled over, stopped the car, and got out. A few seconds later she returned with something big and heavy creaking in her arms. I opened the box and it was filled to the brim with LEGO pieces. That box on the sidewalk began my love affair with LEGO.
LEGO proved to be the ultimate manipulative. I could sit for hours with a tray of LEGO pieces, sorting them and mixing them together. Above all I loved to build structures that were always new, always original, and always completely my own. Lilya could make just about anything accessible for the blind. Lilya wrote out the instructions step by step, describing every blueprint, giving names to every kind of LEGO piece, figuring out the most logical sequence for a blind person to follow. She also sorted the LEGO pieces, putting the pieces necessary for each step into a Ziploc bag and labeling each bag in braille. LEGO is an excellent brain strain. Later sets were easier for Lilya; she realized she could type the instructions on the computer and email them to me. My screen reader took care of the rest, so there was no longer a need for her to braille anything.
I have described twenty LEGO sets, our jargon is clear and concise. The terms we use are similar to the piece names originally chosen by the LEGO Group. I have accessible instructions for the following LEGO sets (set numbers are in parentheses): Grand Emporium (10211), Queen Anne's Revenge (4195), Hogwarts Castle (4842), Fire Brigade (10197), Pet Shop (10218), Town Hall (10224), Palace Cinema (10232), Parisian Restaurant (10243), Motorized Excavator (8043), Luke's Landspeeder (8082), Pop Star Recording Studio (41103), Speed Race vs. Snake Oiler (8175), Tow Truck (42031), Super-cyle Chase (70808), Arctic Snowmobile (60032), Detective's Office (10246), Volkswagen T1 Camper Van (10220), Ferris Wheel (10247), Spider-trike vs. Electro (76014), Guardian of the Deep (8058), Prehistoric Hunters (6914), ARC-170 Starfighter (75072), and Tower Bridge (10214)
By Liz Eagan on Sep 26, 2016
Students who are blind and visually impaired come up with fun, amusing, and creative responses when they are prompted by cards in this activity, Game of Things.
Materials: The Game of Things I found this game as I was shopping at Walgreens. I plan to braille each card and have students pull one for a journal topic. We may or may not use it as the intended game. I tried it out today with the "Things...that would make a good potato chip flavor." We had lots of laughs as we came up with flavors. I did it orally to get the idea of how we can have fun the topics on the cards. Some "interesting" potato chip flavors: chocolate, bananas (for Minions or monkeys), rotten garbage (for raccoons), and the list goes on.
By Raquel Espina, May 26, 2017
The aim of this game is to make a good activity for resource provision and to get the child who is blind interested in reading and participating in games with other children.
Materials: You will need: Cardstock paper, scissors and a pen, paper clips and cello tape (Scotch tape), magnets, and clear sticky braille paper (laminate them before adding the braille).
Directions: Cut the shapes and laminate them. Braille the challenges and stick them on the same side. Use Scotch tape to stick a paper clip on the back of each card.
Note: I cut the cards in different shapes to make it more interesting. Add a challenge on one side of each of them. I made different types of cards, including: Simple math problems (addition to 10), Following directions, like "Wiggle your fingers" or "Balance on one leg." Or Simple questions, such as "What did you have for breakfast?" or "What is your favorite food?"
To play: All cards are upside down on the floor. A child will use a magnet to grab one of them, say what shape they got and read the challenge. When we get a simple or fun question, the person that got it will answer and then everybody else takes a turn. We all join in for the fun challenges.
Variations: This game can be played by braille readers, as well as print readers.
Invite the students to create their own challenge cards.
By Sensory Sun on Nov 30, 2016
The popular "Roll a Character" printable games can be adapted using braille and tactile elements for players who are blind.
Materials: Print & Braille Game Instructions, tactile Pieces cut from template, and tactile Dice
Adapting the Game
Procedure: First, print the game instructions using an ink printer, or a braille embosser if available. Add braille text to the ink only printed pages. You can either add braille numbers to each of the dice or use puffy paint to fill in the dots for a tactile image. Next, print the template for the character pieces. You can then simply place the template on the desired paper or material and cut out both at the same time, or trace the template outline onto the material to cut out. Consider using different textured papers, felt, foam and other materials that will make the pieces easily distinguishable. Some lightly textured papers can be used in ink printers to simplify the process. You could also print the black and white templates to create raised line drawings of each piece using a braille embosser that prints graphics or a PIAF machine. Finally, add any other tactile elements you wish using glitter glue or other embellishments.
Playing the Game: The game can be played by one or more players. To begin, one player rolls the die and reads the number rolled by counting the bumps on the die. The player then finds the number on the instruction sheet and reads the character part to add to his/her character. If the player does not already have that part, he/she finds the tactile piece and then adds it to his final character sheet. The die and instruction sheet are passed to the next player who then completes his/her turn in the same manner. Play continues until one or all players complete their characters.
By Charlotte Cushman, July 02, 2016
The Ballyland Magic app is an educational and fun iPad game specifically designed for BVI children, to learn and practice a number of touch gestures for VoiceOver, Apple’s built-in screen reader.
This requires the use of specific touch gestures that are different from those generally used by sighted children. Likening VoiceOver gestures to magic hand movements, the app aims to make children, their parents and teachers feel confident and positive in starting to use this special gesture-based navigation.
Children can enjoy the interaction with the Ballylanders, while the supportive games enable them to gradually learn a number of navigational touch gestures for VoiceOver. Mastering all of the gestures that are introduced in the app means that children can take charge of the entertaining Ballyland Magic Show, which features the Ballylanders’ ‘magic’ acts.
By Tom Dekker, 3-27-15
I find this story extremely interesting, as it represents a thought process similar to the one I had when I initially sought assistance to develop my tactile screenshot diagrams for iDevice touch screens. Those students with an aptitude in this area very quickly became much more proficient at navigating the screens when they could explore the diagram with one hand, while flicking through icons and controls with the other. Before long, serial flicking was pretty much replaced as the ability to spatially locate the controls improved. Also, our diagram book, actually called: "iFeelaGrams: Tactile Screenshots for iPad and iOS8". Note that the iHabilitation website also contains a set of teaching videos - one for each iFeelaGram.
WonderBaby is a community for parents of kids who are blind or multiply disabled. Just ask! [email protected]. Resources and support for parents adopting a child who is blind or visually impaired. Hundreds of articles and activities are listed on their web site.
By Beth Borysewicz, February 10, 2018
My oldest son is 8 years old and in the 3rd grade, which is the same age as my student D. They are great friends, sharing common interests like a love of Minecraft and telling and hearing silly jokes. Another one of my son's favorite things is words games and brainteasers. He often asks me to make up "secret messages" for him. These are simply replacing the letters of the alphabet with a symbol that represents a letter which he has to figure out (also known as a "cryptogram").
Knowing that D and my son have such similar interests, I knew she would LOVE this activity! Instead of calling it "crack the code", I decided to call it "braille hieroglyphics," which sounds a lot cooler. I used APH's feel and peel stickers to substitute for the letters of the alphabet.
It took some getting used to. I had created 2 templates for her to explore and decide which one she thought she could work best with. I used this time to talk to her about how important it is for her to verbalize to her wonderful transcriptionist the layout that works best for her. I wanted to give her options so that she could understand that although the information delivered is the same, if she has a preference she can let us know and we can accommodate that. Self-advocacy is not a new concept for her, but knowing that she can have input in how her work is delivered to her is something that she is beginning to work on. I asked her if she had another suggestion on how we could get it done, and she asked me if she told me the letters if I could braille them out for her.
In hindsight, I had used a work tray over her brailler. D. has a plexiglass shelf that goes over the top of her brailler, so that she can be reading a brailled sheet on top of the tray, but still have access to braille on her brailler in the same space. It might be hard to see, but I covered the page with the code on it in clear packing tape, so that the stickers could be removed and reused. I also put the clear packing tape on the alphabet/symbol page so that the symbols could be switched around every time you do the activity. If your student is anything like D., then after the second coded message she/he will have memorized the symbols that are associated with each symbol and switching will be a necessity to keep the student interested.
As you can see we have many CTEBVI Specialists. These amazing people provide expert advice in their skill area. Specialists must be current members. The requirements include attending conference, writing an article at least twice a year (one can be a workshop presentation), and answering questions from the field of BVI. The email contact information is provided below.
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SPECIALITY |
NAMES |
E-MAIL ADDRESS |
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Advocacy |
Jacob Lesner-Buxton |
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Alternative Media |
open |
open |
|
Assistive Technology |
Jessica McDowell |
|
|
BANA |
Tracy Gaines |
|
|
CVI |
Amanda Leuck |
|
|
Deafblind & Multiple Disabilities |
Maurice Belote |
|
|
Education K-12 |
Sheryl Schmidt |
|
|
Formats |
tentative |
open |
|
Infant/Preschool |
Diana Dennis |
|
|
Large Print |
Joan Treptow |
|
|
Mathematics |
Alexa Garza |
|
|
Music |
Richard Taesch |
|
|
O & M |
Eric Sticken |
|
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Tactile Graphics |
Jon Crawley |
|
|
UEB |
Amy Furman |
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