High Peak Braille Group

Summary
What happened?
What difference has ICT made?
What was learnt?
Find out more

Summary

High Peak Braille Group is a recently developed social enterprise run by visually impaired people and group members requested High Peak CVS support to develop ICT for their new group.

To publicise their purpose to other visually impaired people, High Peak Braille Group used computers with special software to produce Braille embossed materials on a Braille printer. High Peak CVS provided ICT support to the group, including acting as ‘eyes’ when their machines went wrong both at home and in the office.

The key ICT problems were:

text on the computer screen and their Braille printer were not synchronised
the screen text reader was not working properly
software updates needed technical support to be properly installed

What happened?

High Peaks CVS were able to offer practical ICT support from an independent source and built trust with group members to:

Purchase upgraded software
Improvement of access to large files
Enabling the computer accessibility software was setup to ‘Read instructions and pop up messages’ out to the computer user
Utilise menu bars which were not being ‘read aloud’ to the computer user

What difference has ICT made?

High Peak CVS was able to make the computers fully operational and suited to the needs of visually impaired computer users. This enabled their confidence to grow in using the ICT and reduce the negative impact on the group to developing its goals.

What was learnt?

The Braille Group valued support from someone who knew how to speak to them with sensitivity and treated them as equals.

They valued support from a trustworthy source, who they knew would not suggest or sell them something which was inappropriate for their ICT needs.

The East Midlands regional ICT champion learnt application of short key strokes for unsighted people and the ICT accessibility needs of ‘unsighted’ people when a ‘sighted’ person is not there.