Chase Crispin is a 16-year-old from Blair, Nebraska who was born with Leber’s congenital amaurosis, a blinding eye condition. But the fact that Chase couldn’t see never slowed him down – until the end of his sophomore year at Blair High School.
“In Honors Geometry, I began to really need a graphing calculator when we started working with basic trig functions. I also knew in the coming year I would need a calculator capable of working with matrices and other Algebra II functions,” said Chase.
In the past, this would have been the end – students like Chase would simply have to stop learning math because no graphing calculator existed that they could easily use. Yet Chase, now a junior at Blair High School, is still taking honors math classes thanks to his Orion TI-84 Plus Talking Graphic Calculator (TGC). He sits and learns side-by-side with the rest of his classmates, using the same technology.
“I am the only visually impaired student in this school. The other students use a classroom set of TI-84 Plus calculators during class. All of the instruction they provide to the sighted students applies to the Orion TI-84 Plus TGC as well, so I am able to follow along during instruction and accomplish the same tasks at the same time,” said Chase.
The Orion TI-84 Plus TGC is the world’s first fully accessible graphic calculator for visually impaired students. The Orion is a compact accessory developed by Orbit Research that attaches to the top of a TI-84 Plus graphing calculator. Blind students can interact with the calculator using speech, audio and haptic (vibration) feedback.
“The innovation is really in us coming up with creative ways of extracting the data from the TI-84, then parsing it so that meaningful audio output can be generated to give the student a really good user experience,” said Venkatesh Chari, Chief Technology Officer at Orbit Research.
Recently, the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) named Texas Instruments its 2013 recipient of the Zickel Award for collaborating with Orbit Research on the Orion TI-84 Plus TGC. The Zickel Award is given to a company or person whose creativity results in the development of innovative products that improve the quality of life for blind and visually-impaired students.
“It breaks down barriers for blind students. It breaks down barriers that other technology before now could not,” said Scott Sedberry, a TI EdTech strategic business manager. “This innovation enables kids who have been held back through their unfortunate disabilities a chance to visualize mentally as well as compete in class, and be excellent in ways that they couldn’t have before.”
TI licensed to Orbit Research the use of the operating system for the TI-84, enabling the Orion accessory to get the right kind of data out of the graphic calculator. Scott said for TI this project was, ‘an innovation of the heart.’ It is an innovation that will result in the future success of bright students like Chase, who can now continue to learn and grow alongside his peers throughout high school, college and beyond. While winning the Zickel Award was certainly an honor for TI and Orbit Research, the reward is seeing students like Chase succeed in classrooms where blind students have previously been left behind.
“It is simply phenomenal. It is actually hard to find words to describe it,” said Venkatesh as he took a long pause. “You can see and experience looking at these students and listening to their parents and teachers about how this has really changed their lives. It is really amazing.”