CViConnect vs GoTap Braille

Who is the app for? CVi Connect is an iPad application intended to support parents, and teachers of the visually impaired (TVIs), who work with children who have Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI). The app can be used by parents, TVIs and anyone else who works with children who have CVI. CVi Connect's goal is to aid in the process of improving the visual impairment with this iPad application, and grow the awareness of CVI as a whole and provide educational content related to CVI. What does it do? The application guides the user through exercises of varying difficulty that are intended to help the child's eye focus on graphics on the screen, which stimulates the area of the brain that is most affected by CVI. By stimulating this area of the brain we can support the improvement of the child's vision. Over time the exercises are tailored to each child based on the data that is collected while the child and parent use the application. How does it work? Using the front-facing camera in the iPad the application can measure facts about how the child is responding to the exercises. All of these expertly-determined facts can then be graphed and analyzed by the educator, in whole or in part, across all training sessions. For example, it is possible to graph the time spent, on average, on training sessions combined with the number of times a sprite is touched, showing ways of measuring improvement in visual acuity as well as allowing a teacher to tailor future lesson plans to better match the needs of the student. In addition to analyzing favorite and least favorite lessons, the CVI system has the ability to use information from the training sessions to automatically generate new training sessions that are best for the student. As an example, the system can detect highly touched areas of the iPad and where sprites are commonly touched. Using this information, the system can automatically generate new lesson plans that focus the attention specifically on these areas as well as specifically AWAY from these areas to improve acuity. The system can use facts about the lengths of time spent on average by the user on training sessions to tailor the length of time a typical training session should take place. Where can I get help if I need it? CVi Connect maintains a support forum where users of the app (parents, TVI's and CVI professionals) are supported by leading CVI professionals and CVi Connect technical staff. Users can asks questions and provide feedback in this forum, which adds to the CVi community as a whole by serving as a place where CVI discussions can take place.

Are you looking for the perfect solution to teach braille to students who attend inclusive classrooms or a solution to teach students to read braille during remote/distance learning? GoTap Braille contains over 80 pages of interactive lessons that teach and reinforce braille. Designed to be used by both children with significant visual impairments and by sighted children, GoTap Braille was designed to teach braille contractions in the manner that typically developing sighted peers learn to read. Sighted students can use the app to learn to read print while sitting alongside the student who is learning the same information in braille. Developed by Dr. Betsy Flener, winner of the National Braille Press Louis Braille Touch of Genius Competition in 2015, GoTap Braille was designed by thorough examination of the features in the most popular literacy apps that actively engage sighted students. Features include the opportunity to match braille words and contractions on the accompanying overlays with auditory feedback, create and form words with various contractions, make sentences with various short words, read sentences and paragraphs on the overlays, and read a short story, all with auditory reinforcement. The app includes: • Over 80 pages of interactive activities that teach all 190 Literary and basic punctuation contractions • Includes tactile discrimination activities early in the app • Incorporates the Dolch Sight Words and Fry Sight Words • Includes close to 500 braille 3-D Tiles that are sight words or braille contractions • Includes 36 vinyl braille overlays produced by the National Braille Press along with various vinyl template overlays to introduce and match contractions • Designed to be used by teachers of the visually impaired (TVI) and also paraprofessionals and parents working under the direction of the TVI