App Turns Tablet into Math Aid for Visually Impaired Students From: Vanderbilt University - 03/05/2012 By: David Salisbury Vanderbilt University researchers have developed a tablet application designed to assist visually impaired students in subjects that are hard to comprehend without the aid of normal vision, such as algebra, graphing, and geometry. The researchers say the app could have a major impact on how science, technology, engineering, and math subjects are taught to the visually impaired. The app takes advantage of a user's sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to enhance the remote control of machines, devices, or virtual objects. "When I began reading articles about haptic technology being incorporated into these new touchscreen devices, I realized that the people who really need haptics are people with impaired vision because they heavily rely on their sense of touch to 'see' the world around them," says Vanderbilt graduate student Jenna Gorlewicz. The researchers programmed the tablets so they vibrate or generate a specific tone when a student's fingertip touches a line, curve, or shape displayed on the screen. "If one of these tablets were networked wirelessly to the teacher's computer, then, when he or she projects a graph or equation on the screen at the front of the class, the same graph would appear on the student's tablet," Gorlewicz says. Read the entire article and watch a video (3:15) at: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/03/haptic-tablet/ Links: Jenna Gorlewicz https://www4.vanderbilt.edu/vise/visepeople/jenna-gorlewicz/ Medical and Electromechanical Design Laboratory http://research.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/MEDLab/ Robert Webster http://research.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/MEDLab/people/webster/index.html Math by touch: new tablet app teaches the visually impaired to do math http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/math-by-touch-new-tablet-app-teaches-the-visually-impaired-to-do-math/12289