PITTSBURGH — Imagine having to teach 50 children, ages 3-18, how to get their homework done, get from classroom to classroom, and use computers to keep up in school.

        Now imagine that those children are in 40 different schools, and they all have a visual impairment. That might be total blindness, the need to sit in the first row or hold print 10 times the conventional size at close range for reading.

        That's the job challenge faced by Terry Pastel, of Conejo Valley, Calif., and others every day.

        A conference here earlier this month called “2001: A Technology Odyssey” aimed to make her job easier.

        It took a giant step forward to bring professionals with broad responsibilities up to speed with assistive technology for blind and visually impaired computer users. More than 500 educators, rehabilitation specialists and other professionals from around the world attended recently.

        In 26 hands-on computer workshops, participants learned to cruise the Internet with screen-reading software, to make Web sites accessible and use common applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint with speech and keyboard commands.

Teaching one-on-one

        Karen Schoenharl, computer skills instructor for the Clovernook Center for the Blind in Cincinnati, teaches mostly one-on-one. Her job is to help people losing vision keep their jobs by gaining computer skills with screen-reading and magnification software. She might go to a workplace to adapt software to work with assistive technology products.

        For Nasser Nofel, diversity of skills is perhaps even broader. As t in Palestinian Gaza his job is to translate Braille texts from English to Arabic, teach orientation and mobility skills, locate library materials — and, now that he has been to the United States for training — teach students to get answers from the Internet and use e-mail.

        Thirty-six product demonstrations and 43 paper presentations ran concurrently in an unprecedented collection of assistive technology learning opportunities.

        Product demonstrations included:

        • A program that converts the compositions of blind composers to Braille music scores in minutes.

        • A global positioning system that talks the user through routes throughout the United States or Canada.

        • A talking program with tactile drawings that enables a blind mathematics student to compute complicated equations with three-dimensional representations.

:Bigger crowd than expected

        Conference organizers anticipated a registration of about 250 people. When that was surpassed by more than 100 in early May, workshops were added and sessions expanded. Participants included program directors and university faculty from Malaysia, Taiwan, Israel, the United Kingdom and several European countries.

        “I am awestruck by the response this conference has generated,” said Carl R. Augusto, president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, one of the sponsors. “It is amazing that we have attracted people from all over the world, and clear that this needs to become an ongoing event.”

        The good news in technology over the past two decades is the remarkable progress it has brought to classrooms, workplaces and homes of computer users who are blind or visually impaired.

        The challenge has been to find experts able to teach those who need it.

        The “2001: A Technology Odyssey” likely will be referred to in future as a historic event in merging the information and the people who need it in a hands-on environment that worked.

        Other conference sponsors included the Association of Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER), the national professional organization for educators and rehabilitation specialists in blindness and Mitsubishi Corp.

        E-mail dkkendrick@earthlink.net. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/kendrick

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