Technology is changing all the time, and who can say what tools R will find useful in the future. For now R is using a Perkins Brailler to learn about brailling on. These things look like they were produced in the 1950's - soid cast aliminium, and nothing invested in their design since, least of all their looks, which of course are largely irrelevant to the user, but have some interest for sighted peers. They come in at around a grand to buy, but we have been lucky enough to get one on loan from Vision Australia as part of their early literacy program, and VERY lucky to also be donated one which we can keep. This is the one R decorated. He has moved from just moving the cursor backwards and forwards and listening to it go 'bing' at the end of a line to actually trying to feel the writing he has done...
The next bit of technology we're aiming for is the Mountbatten Learning System. This is an electronic brailler which can be connected to a regular PC. R is looking forward to hearing the brailler talk to him. (He's tried one at our friend's/distant cousins Jennifer and Jason's house in Auckland and loved it). Telling him the letters, words and sentences he is making as he writes. This means that with a little bit of extra software and a bit of tweaking people (you, me, his teachers) will be able to produce braille while just having to type a word document. Or download a file from somewhere else and turn it into braille. A great time saver for us. Teachers will also be able to see what Rory is writing. R will need one of these at school and one at home. They're a bit to heavy to lug to and from school, and unfortunately don't seem to have a USB port yet so we won't be able to see exactly what he is doing at school unless he brings home a printed out copy. We'll learn more about this as we get closer to school. These beasties come in at around $4,500 or so. Luckily there is some funding available for R when he gets to school, to cover equipment and an additional worker in the room (to produce braille versions of whatever the teacher is presenting to the students). And he will have a visiting teacher from a specialist service to teach him the braille skills and other curriculum needs... quite a bit to work out before that all happens. We're hoping to get him the Mountbatten this year, perhaps midyear when some additional government funding comes through. He will have had a couple of special 'dot power' classes (for preschoolers and children in the early years of school learning about braille), and I will have had a chance to learn some more braille myself.
The other bit of fun technology we're looking out for is a child friendly digital voice recorder, preferably one which has a USB or some other fairly simple way of saving sound files to our computer. The Olympus one looks nice and simple, but you can't hook it up to a computer very easily. I think there are some other cheapies that can be hooked up to a PC but don't look as simple to operate.
