Children diagnosed with CVI frequently have difficulty understanding objects, pictures, and letters presented against a complex background. CVI Book Builder provides materials for parents and teachers to build books specifically for their reader. The kit provides a variety of black pages and black binders to use as low complexity backgrounds against which to present familiar items, photos, and letters/words.

The CVI Book Builder is designed to:

• build a connection between an actual object and a photo of that object, teaching that photos (symbols) have meaning.
• take advantage of natural learning opportunities.
• expand learning by exploring size, direction, colors, and other developmental concepts.

Mini Light Box Overlays are designed to build visual complexity by adding one overlay at a time, individualizing to each child’s needs.

The Mini-Lite Box Overlays are unique in that the parent or teacher may choose the level of visual complexity for each learner. Using color, light, and increasing levels of complexity, overlays can be layered for many different purposes, including instruction or assessment in color identification, shape identification, and counting.

Each set includes overlays in three colors and shapes, as well as translucent overlays with various patterns and colors.

These simulators are standard safety glasses that have been fit with inserts to mimic common eye conditions including cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, detached retina, hemianopsia and high degree myopia.

These simulators are different from others on the market because they show the color changes that are often present in certain eye conditions as well as differences in vision that often occur between the two eyes.

Recommended ages: 12 years and up.

APH’s UEB Math Tutorial contains over 50 lessons broken up into ten chapters that cover the rules of UEB Mathematics. This web-based program runs on any modern computer platform, works well with refreshable braille displays, and is available free-of-charge!

Each lesson contains four sections, including an explanation, reading exercises, writing exercises, and proofreading exercises. Give your students the tools they need to successfully read and write mathematics with the UEB Math Tutorial.

Recommended age: 5 years and up.

Crossword is an online crossword solving tool deployed with universal design concepts. It works with any modern browser on any platform. We are testing only desktop browsers for this first round, as there is still a little more work to do for mobile browsers.

Along with this new kind of app comes a new kind of field testing: you don’t have to apply to become a field tester. Just go to the website https://crossword.aphtech.org and start using it!

As you are testing Crossword, there are a few things that we ask you to consider:

• Does this application allow you to do crossword puzzles?
• Is the user interface easy to use?
• What would make the experience of doing crossword puzzles more enjoyable for you?

Provide feedback by emailing technology@aph.org, and join the Word Puzzles list by sending a blank message to pz-beta-subscribe@tech.aph.org. (This information can also be found in the About section on the website.)

If you send feedback or subscribe to the list, we will ask you to fill out a short survey as well.

APH is seeking field testers for an 8-Dot 3-D Printed Slate. While the braille literary code uses six dots for each character, there are cases when an eight-dot slate is useful. See BANA’s position statement on the topic.

Load up a world of savings on selected APH products with APH’s Sizzlin’ Summer Savings Sale 2018, July 1—September 30. As always, first come, first served.

www.aph.org/sale/

Attention EOTs and all individuals attending APH’s Annual Meeting in October!

Please plan to attend “What’s Next for STEM Products” Round Table Discussion session on Friday morning, October 5th. This is your chance to contribute to the APH product development process.

Come prepared to discuss the kinds of STEM products you would like to have priority in the APH product pipeline – we want to hear your thoughts.

All ideas are welcome – high tech, low tech and everything in between.

Presentations/Exhibits

September 8, 2018
Indianapolis VisionWalk 2018
Indianapolis, IN

September 14-15, 2018
9th Annual IsLAND Conference on Disability
Princeton, NJ

October 18, 2018
Internet Archive Workshop, Print Disabled Collection at Open Library
San Francisco, CA

October 24-26, 2018
NBA Professional Development Conference
Detroit, MI

Conferences

September 18-19, 2018
Bluetooth World 2018
Santa Clara, CA

NIP Event

September 7, 2018
Intervention Continuum NIP
St Marie, IL

Hamilton, N.R. (2000). Wings of courage: A lifetime of triumph over adversity. Calgary, AB: Nacelles Publishing.

This month’s Barr highlight is Wings of Courage, an autobiography chronicling the life of Neil Hamilton. With a touch of wonder and affection, Hamilton reflects on growing up on a Saskatchewan farm, coming of age in the “Dirty Thirties”, and how the values and lessons learned from his youth carried him to the war-torn skies of Europe and desert of North Africa. As a pilot and instructor in World War II, Hamilton recounts the night when his eyes inexplicably hemorrhaged at 25,000 feet, resulting in the loss of most of his sight.

Hamilton returned to Canada to recuperate and to adjust to his blindness. After overcoming tuberculosis of the spine, Hamilton’s life took a new direction when he accepted a position in the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). Hamilton recounts the many stories of partnerships with local Lions Clubs, and programs to benefit people with visual impairment during his tenure with CNIB.

An avid sportsman, Hamilton shares anecdotes of his golf, bowling, and curling exploits. He also founded a Hall of Fame in his own home in order to bring athletes and sports celebrities together in a social gathering. Wings of Courage is a story of serving others and facing life’s difficulties head on.

“Blind Man’s Baseball.” Pic Magazine, 1 Oct. 1940, pp. 40–41.

“Proud fathers buy their male offspring a ball and bat when the youngsters are scarcely big enough to walk… Every American boy plays baseball — every one, that is, except the boy who is blind.” Clearly reflecting the attitudes of its time, “Blind Man’s Baseball” presents a 1940 adaptation of the game of baseball for players who are visually impaired.

According to David Wanczyk’s 2018 book Beep, adapted baseball games have been played since at least 1894. This Pic Magazine version may be the only version of the game where a ring is pitched along a wire instead of a ball. The batter hears the ring sliding towards home plate on the cable and attempts to hit the ring past the fielders down the wire.

To run the bases, the batter has to follow a waist-high wire around the diamond, no doubt making for a dangerous game if the base is overshot. This article has been digitized for Internet Archive at https://archive.org/stream/blindmansbasebal00unse#page/n1

APH is working with the Internet Archive to digitize portions of the M.C. Migel Collection. Search the phrase “full text” to find these items at http://migel.aph.org. The digitized texts are available in a variety of formats, including DAISY, Kindle, EPUB, PDF, etc.

Contact Library staff: library@aph.org, 800-223-1839, ext. 705.

 

By: Walt Whitman

T-N2191-50 – $78.50

In 1852, young Walt Whitman, a down-on-his-luck house-builder in Brooklyn, was hard at work writing two books. One would become one of the most famous volumes of poetry in American history, a free-verse revelation beloved the world over, Leaves of Grass. The other, a novel, would be published under a pseudonym and serialized in a newspaper. A short, rollicking story of orphan-hood, avarice, and adventure in New York City, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle appeared to little fanfare. Then it disappeared. No one laid eyes on it until 2016, when literary scholar Zachary Turpin, University of Houston, followed a paper trail deep into the Library of Congress.

By: Scott Turrow

T-N2199-50 – $266.00

Fifty-year-old former prosecutor Bill ten Boom walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his law career, his wife, even his country. But now he is tapped to investigate the disappearance of an entire Roma refugee camp following the Bosnian War.

By: Melissa Range

T-N2207-00 – $35.00

The poems in this award-winning collection focus on the question of religious authority. The poems explore how religious ideas are both codified and challenged through writing and how language can be used or abused to claim religious authority. National Poetry Series.

By: Marisha Pessi

T-N2178-20 – $403.50

After piano prodigy Ashley Cordova is found dead from an apparent suicide, journalist Scott McGrath investigates to determine if her father Stanislas, a reclusive cult-movie director, was involved. The last time he attempted to expose Stanislas, Scott lost his job and ruined his marriage.