Braille fair teaches kids about blind community

From KTRV-TV in Idaho:

Boise, Idaho -- The Boise Public Library hosted a Braille fair, to teach kids about Idaho's blind community.

There families learned how much technology is changing the lives of the visually impaired.

"There is software now that will run on smart phones. It allows them to speak to me as a blind person," said Mike Gibson, a Boise State University assisted technology coordinator.

"On the computer we have talking programs, the speech programs. It reads what's on the screen," said Susan Bradley, with the National Federation of the Blind.

"There is technology now that will take advantage of the camera part of my cell phone to be able to read the text to me," said Gibson.

During the braille fair, Gibson showed off the cell phone camera product.

He demonstrated how whatever he points his camera at and snaps a picture of, his cell phone interprets and then reads back to him.

"You know it really is quite good. It's not perfect. I would give it 90 percent accuracy," he said. But perhaps the best new tool is the braille keyboard. It has a refreshable Braille display on it.

"There are pins that move up and down that create the different Braille characters on it," he said.

As Gibson showed, it allows the vision impaired to read anything that appears on a computer, proof read what they've typed and check their e-mails.

"Oh it's huge. It would be like going from prehistoric times till now," he explained.

"Blind people may use some different techniques to do things but they do most of the same things that sighted people do," said Ramona Walhof, who's blind.

Those we spoke to, only expect technology to continue to improve in the coming years, further expanding their opportunities.