PPD: Multisensory Calculus for Visually Impaired People

斯塔滕岛学院计算机科学系与巴鲁克学院视障人士计算机中心合作，提出了一个为期三年的研究和开发项目。它将制作一套教材，包括听觉图形，以加强视障大学生对科学、数学、工程和技术(SMET)定量学科的了解。参与机构开发了该项目的计算机辅助方法，并在开发坐标几何微积分预科时部署了该方法。具体目标是尽可能快地进一步扩大对微积分的访问。在三年的时间里，该项目将编写计算机辅助课程材料，教授单变量函数的基本微积分和尽可能多的应用，只要时间和资源允许。每年的交付成果将包括文本和40多块图板，图板上有音频字幕和盲文字幕，并配有辅助计算机文件。文本将制作在录音带上，作为ASCII文本供屏幕阅读器阅读，并存储在CD-ROM上。还将有一份印刷文本，供有远见的顾问和导师使用。在可能的情况下，这些材料将在参与机构的网站上自由传播。该项目的更大目标是使有视觉障碍的学生能够直接阅读技术图形，而几乎不依赖视力辅助。该项目的独特之处在于，将该技术部署到明确和详细计划的延长学习课程中，以满足视障学生的需求。该方法可用于在任何年级的任何课程中融入图形材料。通过将该项目的技术部署到所有年级，K-16年级将极大地改善SMET对视力障碍者的普遍可及性。虽然本项目的具体材料是针对严重视力障碍的大学生的需要而开发的，但任何具有初等代数和几何的必备背景的人都可以使用它们，无论是中等水平还是更高水平，以及任何程度的障碍。此外，课程的核心元素，文本和图形，将不会特别地与计算机技术的当前技术水平捆绑在一起，而是将被设计成能够随着技术的发展而适应技术。具体课程内容将至少涵盖SMET课程中微积分的常规第一学期：初等函数的微分、它们的组成和隐式定义的函数、变化率、最大值和最小值的应用，以及示意图：初等函数的积分和应用于面积、体积、质量、弧长等的计算。在可行的情况下，将增加诸如数值方法、形式积分技术、微分方程、无限序列和级数等主题。

The Computer Science Department of the College of Staten Island, in collaboration with the Computer Center for Visually Impaired People of Baruch College, proposes a Research and Development Project over the course of three years. It will produce a set of teaching materials including audiotactile graphics to enhance access by visually impaired college students to the quantitative disciplines in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (SMET). The computer assistive methodology for the project has been developed at the participating institutions and deployed in the development of a precalculus unit on coordinate geometry. The specific goal is to further extend access to the calculus as rapidly as feasible. In the three-year period, the project will create computer assistive course materials for basic differential and integral calculus for functions of a single variable and as much of the applications as time and resources permit. In each year, the deliverables will consist of text coupled with more than forty graphics plates captioned in both audio and braille with supporting computer files. The text will be produced on audio tape, as ASCII text to be read by a screen reader, and on CD-ROM. There will also be a print text for sighted advisors and tutors. Insofar as possible, the materials will be freely disseminated on the web sites of the participating institutions. The larger goal of the project is to enable students with visual impairments to read technical graphics directly with little dependence upon sighted assistance. The project is unique in deploying the technology to an extended course of study planned explicitly and in detail to meet the needs of students who are visually impaired. The methodology can be used to incorporate graphical materials in any course at any grade level. The general accessibility of SMET to people with visual impairments would be greatly improved by deployment of this project's techniques to all grades, K-16. Although the specific materials of this project are developed with the needs of college students with severe visual impairments, they should be useable by anyone with the requisite background in elementary algebra and geometry at the secondary or higher level and with any degree of impairment. Moreover, the core elements, text and graphics, of the course will not be specifically bound to the current state of the art in computer technology but will be designed so that they can be adapted to technology as it evolves. The specific course content will cover at least the conventional first semester of a calculus in a SMET curriculum: differentiation of elementary functions, their compositions, and implicitly defined functions, with application to rates of change, maxima and minima, and sketching graphs: integration of elementary functions with application to calculation of area, volume, mass, arclength, and the like. As feasible, such topics as numerical methods, techniques of formal integration, differential equations, and infinite sequences and series will be added.