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Courses:
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Computer Technology Center
Introduction to Computers: Five Week Course
After completing our evaluation course, students will now have a small taste of what computers and assistive technology can do for them. This five-week course, in addition to reviewing what we've already covered, takes things a step further by giving the student a complete introduction to computers and assistive technology.
The Visual Layout
Even if you're totally blind, having an understanding of what the screen looks like is a good idea. If a blind user has a problem with their computer at the workplace, knowing how to communicate with sighted people about where things are located on the screen can sometimes be helpful. We'll let blind students "feel" what different screens look like by letting them examine raised, tactile diagrams as we proceed through the course. These diagrams are raised pictures of items on the screen such as the desktop, the start menu, program menu bar, etc.
Selecting or Highlighting Text
Before you can manipulate text contained within your documents, such as cutting or copying it, it needs to be selected or highlighted first. Although accomplishing this task may seem quite simple for experienced mouse users, it can first appear daunting for blind users who must depend solely upon using the keyboard. We spend a lot of time on how to do this, explaining the logic of how this is done and removing the mystery from what is the most important concept in using a computer. We'll spend time explaining how to select blocks of text in groups of characters, words and highlighting line by line.
Manipulating Documents
Using a computer allows us to do so much more than just writing text and reading it back, concepts already covered in our previous evaluation course. Our next unit goes beyond the basics and explains how to cut, copy and paste documents. We'll talk about how to delete text from one part of our document and explain how to paste it into another section of the document, or how to paste it in a totally new file. We'll also teach the popular "undo" command to undo any unwanted changes inadvertently made to the document. In addition to using the mouse to perform these functions, all of these commands can easily be done with keyboard shortcuts.
More on Menus and Toolbars
We talk more about menus and explain the difference between the program's main menu or menu bar and the pull-down menus such as the file menu, the edit menu, etc.
Dialog Boxes
When you perform a function from within windows, you are often asked to confirm something or you are asked additional questions about what it is you want to do. These little windows are called dialog boxes and we will teach the student how to easily navigate through them with both the keyboard for blind users and with the mouse for large print users. Dialog boxes can often contain yes/no buttons, OK/Cancel buttons, list boxes, etc. we'll show the student how to move through these different sections of the dialog box.
Spellchecking
No matter how literate we think we are, even the best of us make occasional typos or spelling errors. We'll spend time explaining how to check the spelling of a document. We'll talk about how to use the program's dictionary to add words such as proper names and how to use the suggestion list to replace misspelled words with the correct word. There are many keyboard commands to access these functions, and we'll spend time explaining them.
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