A Visually impaired student practising at the AT Lab

The University of Ghana currently has more than 60 physically challenged and disabled students of which sixteen are visually impaired students enrolled in mainly the Humanities courses. The students range from being partially sighted to legally blind.

The ATL was setup initially to provide advice, guidance and training for students and staff in assistive technology for the visually impaired. The emphasis is on developing computer skills especially office proficiency tools.

Assistive Technology (AT) is a generic term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices and the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. AT promotes greater independence for people with disabilities by enabling them to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to or changed methods of interacting with the technology needed to accomplish such tasks.

A secondary and important goal is to produce accessible reading material. ‘Accessible’ is defined as follows; the print document is rendered in an alternative format such as Braille, audio, large print or e-text in such a manner as to enable the print-handicapped reader to extract information from the document as easily and fully as possible.

The ATL is located on the Ground Floor of the ICT-D Building. The ATs available at the ICTD are computer speech synthesizers, screen readers and magnification tools. We also have headphones, microphones, a scanner and a Braille printer with appropriate software for converting print to accessible formats (WinBraille and Duxbury).

Notwithstanding its role, the Assistive Technology Lab also provides services and help to other forms of disabilities; to provide Equal Access to Technology to all students and staffs within the University environment with any form of disability and bridge the gap between access to information and resources competed for by all students and staffs of the University.