December 23, 2015

Today I was asked to go to the Loss Prevention Center and back. Along the way I understood why they wanted me to go there: the crosswalks were inaccessible and there was no directory of offices near the entrance. So when I got back, I made a map. The label text had to be in very small raised print since there was so little room to put it. I then went onto the document cameras and used a computer with assistive technologies installed. This is shaping up to be an okay job.

Hours logged for this visit: 4.5
Total hours logged: 15 in 4 days

December 22, 2015

These two days, I had a specific project to complete. One was lessons on Unified English Braille, designed to "improve" reading comprehension by changing the system entirely for punctuation, indicators, and contractions. The other was other assistive technologies, like document cameras, magnifiers and screen readers. It was actually pretty hard, considering I can't read braille that fast and most of the content was predictable and not rewarding to struggle reading. There's a reason I'd have been more eager to learn Nemeth or NUBS.

Hours logged for this visit: 4
Total hours: 10.5 in 3 days

Work at Home

Gerry Newell assigned me homework, namely a list of the presidents. So I worked at home and at school on this assignment, and it came out to 8 pages long. There was some colorful humor I added in there, as well as things he felt were important. Some of the issues included not being able to erase mistakes, so I either brailled a series of full cells or started on another page. Other issues involved the way paper loaded, which could and did cause problems. Those pages were also discarded. In the end I had a set of 8 reasonably correct pages to show him, which impressed him enough they continued to let me volunteer. It was pretty time-consuming to try to braille what I remembered about each president, so that is considered a number of hours I worked. Soon after, my brailler broke and I could no longer work at home on anything. Still, this represents a major accomplishment and shows my dedication to my work.

Hours logged for this assignment: 2.5

Total hours logged: 6.5