A prototype reading coach that listens
AAAI '94 Proceedings of the twelfth national conference on Artificial intelligence (vol. 1)
Rapid ethnography: time deepening strategies for HCI field research
DIS '00 Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques
Design studies for a financial management system for micro-credit groups in rural india
CUU '03 Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Universal usability
Sparsha: a comprehensive indian language toolset for the blind
Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
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Less than 3% of the 145 million blind people living in developing countries are literate (Helander, Prejudice and dignity: An introduction to community-based rehabilitation. New York: UNDP 1998). This low literacy rate is partly due to the lack of trained teachers and the challenges associated with learning to write braille on a traditional slate and stylus. These challenges include writing from right to left, writing mirrored images of letters, and receiving significantly delayed feedback. Extensive conversations with the Mathru Educational Trust for the Blind near Bangalore, India, revealed the need for a robust, low-power, low-cost braille writing tutor. We present an iterative and participatory process resulting in the creation and refinement of a prototype braille writing tutor system. This system uses a novel input device to capture a student's activity on a slate using a stylus and uses a range of techniques to teach braille writing skills to both beginner and advanced students. We report on lessons learned from the implementation of this project and from a 6-week pilot study at Mathru, and outline future directions for improvement.