New Beginings

Hi friends, wel­come back to Curb Cut. I’d like to thank Christo­pher for all the won­der­ful work he has done on this site and wish him the best of luck as he moves onward and upward. That said, he still has his login to the site, and we hope he will post as often as he can.

Those of you with a great atten­tion to detail will notice the site has changed ever so slightly. As I will now, hope­fully, be the main con­tent provider, the site’s inter­est will shift more toward uni­ver­sal design for the web, but will still include dis­tance learn­ing. Check this space on Tues­days and Thurs­days (for now) for links and dis­cus­sion on the above top­ics as well as a oppor­tu­ni­ties to take part in a few projects I would like to see done by our com­mu­nity for our com­mu­nity. Thanks again. –jc

  1. Bill Kinyon says:
    November 4, 2004 at 2:56 pm

    THE COMPUTER: A CRUTCH FOR THE BRAIN

    Before work­ing in the field of work force devel­op­ment (par­tic­u­larly with devel­op­men­tally dis­abled adults), I was a com­puter instruc­tor for men­tal health patients, many of whom were devel­op­men­tally dis­abled. Hav­ing taught com­put­ers in a small way for many years to the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, I was amazed at the life-changing results that came from teach­ing basic appli­ca­tions to my new stu­dents. It got me to think­ing about what a com­puter really is.

    When an indi­vid­ual has a sight dis­abil­ity, we design vision tools or other acco­mo­da­tions to assist them. My mother has a hear­ing aid because of a need there. At times I have been injured and needed crutches or a cane to aid my mobil­ity. I could list a myr­iad of other examples.

    The odd thing is that we do not look at men­tal dis­abil­ity in the same way. A com­puter is, basi­cally, a think­ing aid. It can do for us what we can­not do for our­selves in the realms of mem­ory, cal­cu­la­tion and dupli­ca­tion. How­ever, per­haps because infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy devices were pre­vi­ously viewed as toys or tools for the elite, we do not see the obvi­ous truth that com­put­ers are most needed by indi­vid­u­als with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties or pscho­log­i­cal ill­nesses that inter­fere with their abil­ity to think, rea­son, and process information.

    With my stu­dents, I dis­cov­ered that per­sonal com­put­ers and related devices are ide­ally suited to expand­ing their world and expe­ri­ence. For the first time, they were able to inter­act with a com­puter to teach them tuto­ri­als. The com­puter would never make an odd face at how they do things, would never laugh, would never be crit­i­cal or impa­tient. This enabled them to try new things in a non-threatening environment.

    My stu­dents learned how to do math on the com­puter, how to scan and pub­lish their own works of art, how to do dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy and photo edit­ing, and how to estab­lish sup­port net­works and fam­ily connnec­tions through email.

    I learned that com­put­ers are most needed by the peo­ple that we tend to keep away from com­put­ers, those with devel­op­men­tal or psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties. But com­put­ers are not tools only for the highly intel­li­gent, they are, in effect, crutches for the brain.

    Our soci­ety should be doing all that we can to put com­put­ers into the hands of those who need them most. When we awaken to the poten­tial and do this, the results will be wonderful.

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