The IntelliKeys overlay keyboard is a programmable flat membrane A4 sized computer keyboard, providing up to 576 individually programmable keys. It offers an ideal way to provide interesting and motivating tactile computer-linked activities especially for young blind and partially sighted children, and learners with additional difficulties.
We will discuss with examples how we have used the IntelliKeys overlay keyboard by making a range of tactile overlays, enabling computer access for this group of students; and show a range of simple activities made using fun and interesting sounds, tactile graphics and familiar voices, to encourage the pupils to explore tactile overlays.
One of our aims has been to develop a progression of tactile activities that encourage children to refine their interaction and touch skills by providing increasingly challenging tasks including learning to follow lines of differing thicknesses and then using tactile graphical overlays to tell a simple story.
The quiz facility offered by the IntelliPics Studio programme has been especially useful in providing a method of interaction. The program can ask the child to find and press particular areas of the tactile overlay and then to check and respond appropriately to correct or incorrect reactions. These activities can be a lot of fun and very motivating, and offer the child an opportunity to work independently and become familiar with speech and auditory feedback from a computer. The framework nature of the software allows for the creation of very personalised activities adapted to the learning, visual and physical needs of individual students.
Prior knowledge of topic assumed: Low
Contains advanced technical content: No
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