ViewPlus Lives United

Once again, this holiday season we are giving back to our local community. As we have done in the past, we are participating in United Way's Giving Tree program to help support local families in need. Through United Way's collaboration with the Vina Moses Center, many families here in Benton County will be able to have a gift-filled Christmas.

If you are unfamiliar with the way this program works, many local businesses and organizations setup Christmas trees with gift tags as the ornaments. Those who wish to participate select a tag from the tree and buy a gift that corresponds to gender and age specific information listed on the tag. The unwrapped gifts are then donated to the Vina Moses Center and distributed accordingly.


This year, we are proud to say that ViewPlus has been able to collect over 100 gifts to help local children here in our community! For more information on the Vina Moses Center visit: www.vinamoses.org

Free ViewPlus Online Webinar

Translating Math Equations to Nemeth Code Join our braille math expert, Mike Sivill, for an in-depth instruction on translating MathType equations to Nemeth Code with the Tiger Software Suite. Creating an Accessible Braille Calendar Learn the effective use of tables in MS Word to create an accessible braille calendar for a student's everyday use. Register Now! 100 seats available on a first come, first serve basis.

ViewPlus Participates in United Way's Day of Caring

On August 25th, approximately 30 ViewPlus employees came together and braved the upper ninety degree weather to participate in the United Way's Day of Caring event. This year we helped local charitable organization, Home Life Inc. who assists people with developmental disabilities enjoy active, productive and independent lives. The actual Day of Caring is scheduled for September 22nd, however due to conflicting schedules we were able to make arrangements to participate early and have the biggest work crew possible.

We arrived onsite to a home donated to Home Life Inc. by the Teater family. The work consisted of weeding their garden, landscaping, deep-cleaning of the interior, painting the exterior of the home, and even gave some of our engineers the opportunity for a little demolition! Needless to say, there was ample opportunity for everyone to participate!

The event was a great success on multiple levels. First, we really enjoyed doing what we could to help out our local community and we all had a great time; it brought us closer together and was a great team building environment. Who knew all those could go hand-in-hand! We really look forward to helping out our community again in the future!

A special thanks to all of the coordinators at United Way and Home Life. We really appreciate all or your hospitality and flexibility.

If you would like information on ways you can participate in the United Way Day of Caring visit: http://dayofcaring.info/

Americans with Disabilities Act turns 20!

Twenty years ago on July 26, 1990 the Americans with Disabilities act was passed. This was a monumental moment in our history as it created equal opportunities for people with disabilities in the workplace as well as made mandatory the accessibility of public spaces and information.

According to the U.S. Census, 15% or 41.3 million Americans have a disability. Until 1990, these citizens had unequal opportunities in America and felt discriminated against by employers and in many instances were not provided the necessary accommodations to enjoy many of the public spaces and events that most Americans do.

Michigan led the United States in rights for the disabled as it was one of the first states to pass laws protecting disabled people. This has not changed as Michigan is still leading the country by having strict laws enforcing these rights. For example, under federal law a business only has to adhere with the ADA if they have a certain number of employees. However, in Michigan the business must only have one employee for these laws to apply.

An article by Zlati Meyer of Free Press points out that today we see "so many disabled people out and about [as] part of our society – that it's so commonplace you don't even think about it anymore". This can be attributed to the ADA and its success within the community. Also within this article are many stories about individual lives that the ADA has changed. If you would like to view this article please visit: http://tinyurl.com/2fzrcqe

Krakow School for the Blind Destroyed

In May 2010 Krakow, Poland faced the worst flood in the history of the city. Losses totaled over $207 million. Due to large floods in the past, Poland was better prepared for the disaster, but the damage was still very extensive. The Krakow School for the Blind was one organization that was heavily damaged and nearly destroyed. This school is one of the largest schools for the Blind in Poland. Everything that was below ground was ruined. Nineteen classrooms including computer laboratories, music rooms, etc. were destroyed. Losses from the Krakow School for the Blind totaled $250,000. The School has 466 students enrolled that now have no suitable place or equipment to learn.

Upon hearing this news a local dealer, Altix, worked to gather donations for the school in order to help counter some of the losses. ViewPlus has donated a Cub Jr. embosser to help the Krakow School for the Blind get back up and running. Hopefully with all the generous donations the Krakow School will be able to reopen and begin teaching shortly.

For information on how to donate to the Krakow School for the blind please visit: http://tinyurl.com/24kbtvb
Navigate to the News tab located on the left side of the page. Then click on the article titled "Losses Caused by Flood Centre" to find details on the flooding and information on how to donate.

IVEO Tested by Students

Over the past year Elizabeth Jones has spent time with other teachers and graphic design interns to develop curriculum for the IVEO learning system that could be implemented throughout schools.
IVEO provides interactive math and science solutions to help improve learning through touch, sound, and sight. It is particularly aimed towards students with disabilities. Although it is not made specifically for blind users, IVEO is ideal for these students as it produces tactile images and can include braille if that fits the student’s needs.
After much work throughout the summer and fall, Liz Jones finally got everything ready to test IVEO within the school system and document its success. Through working with a local school, ViewPlus hopes to fine tune the materials and technologies before they are released on a larger scale.
Currently, Liz goes to the school once a week for about 30 minutes. During this time she loads the day’s lessons onto the students’ computers and lets the students go through the lessons by touching, watching, and listening to IVEO.
With the information learned from this trial, ViewPlus hopes to further improve IVEO and prepare it for use within school systems such as the one Liz attended.
To find more information on IVEO please visit www.viewplus.com
To read the article in which Liz and her students were featured please visit http://tinyurl.com/2aorngq

CSUN 2010

When: March 22- 27th
Where: Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, San Diego, CA

This year CSUN was in a new location. Traditionally, the event takes place in Los Angeles, California; however, the show was moved to the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego, California this year.

There was a lot of excitement surrounding the ViewPlus booth at CSUN. Not only were we able to bring an embosser from each line to display, but we also got to show our soon to be released InkConnect and our prototype for the SpotDot EmFuse Color Braille Station.

The InkConnect is an attachment to the popular Elite and Premier embossers allowing them to add ink to braille documents. The SpotDot Emfuse will be able to print double-sided braille and full color ink documents up to 11 by 17 inches in a single pass. The EmFuse will be the first of its kind, as there are no other embossers on the market that are able to print double-sided ink and braille.

The CTO and founder of ViewPlus Technologies, John Gardener, gave two presentations during the tradeshow discussing math accessibility for higher education. ViewPlus offers the Audio Graphing Calculator (AGC) as a solution to this. The AGC is comparable to a TI-83 calculator and provides accessible graphing and equation input among other things.

Thank you to those of you that stopped by our booth and we hope to see you at our upcoming shows!

Upcoming shows include:
Sight City, April 28-30- ViewPlus will be in the Eurobraille booth
CTEBVI in Los Angeles, April 22-25 – ViewPlus will be in the A.T. Kratter booth

Hope to see you there!

SpotDot EmFuse - Color Braille Station

Since the release of the original Emprint 4 years ago, we have revolutionized the way color ink and braille can be combined in the same document. The Emprint produced high quality color ink and braille in one pass bringing graphics to life for those who are blind or low vision. Later, the Emprint SpotDot® was released which was basically the same as the original Emprint, however the Emprint SpotDot had an improved user interface and embossed faster. This color ink and braille technology has become very popular among Tiger™ users but the need for a large format solution still lingers.

To fulfill this need, we are proud to announce the development of the SpotDot EmFuse Color Braille Station. The SpotDot EmFuse takes creating accessible documents to a whole new level. Combine the world's most advanced braille and tactile graphics technology with state-of-the-art color digital printing and get the only seamless, large-print color and braille production solution in the world.



The SpotDot EmFuse takes creating accessible documents to a whole new level. Creating braille books and magazines will soon be at the fingertips of all. We look forward to the release of the SpotDot EmFuse Color Braille Station sometime next year!

If you happen to come to CSUN in San Diego this year, please stop by our booth to see the first prototype!

The Importance of Braille

A recent article in the New York Times discussed the importance of braille literacy. After reading this article we have found critical points and useful information regarding the importance of braille.

The following is a summary of the New York Times article, using their ideas, research, and references.

Less than 10% of the 1.3 million legally blind people read braille. In today's age of technology it makes sense that people are shying away from learning braille. Braille books are large and expensive and there are many alternative technologies to read and communicate besides the written word.

Studies are showing that blind people that never learned braille have a more difficult time writing and communicating their thoughts. One particular study found that students that read braille wrote better stories, while those that just used a keyboard and played back their writing typically wrote very disorganized and disjointed stories.

Writing stories may not seem like a critical part of life, but most often blind people get jobs doing intellectual work rather than jobs involving manual labor. Being able to properly communicate through your writing is important in an intellectual work place. It is believed that this is why people that have learned braille as a child are twice as likely to be employed as those that had not.

The visual cortex takes up over 20% of the human brain and was typically thought to only be accessible by sighted people. Recent brain imaging studies have shown that reading braille actually stimulates the visual cortex in a blind person. It has also been found that if the visual cortex does not have images to process, it can reorganize for new functions, such as memory.

As you can see, although there are tools to read a book or a letter out loud, it is still advantageous to know braille. Braille helps blind people understand the fundamentals of language and convey them in their written communications. It also helps to stimulate the brain.

To see the original NY Times article or to see their references, please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03Braille-t.html