Blind Person Doing Charts?

Question

My father-in-law is getting ready to graduate from an alcohol drug studies program to be a counselor. He is blind. An issue someone brought up to him is "how are you going to be able to do the charting"? Due to confidentiality laws he can't have a transcriber in the meetings with him. Does anybody have any ideas on what he could do to create charts? Keep in mind he will need to be able to access them also. Do you have any other ideas on things he can do?

Answer 1

There is a computer program called "JAWS." It is a speaking computer software program that is used by many people who have visual impairments. I have a friend who is an activity coordinator at a community center, and she is blind. She runs all of her computer programs (Microsoft Word, Excel, the Internet, etc) with the use of "JAWS." If she is concerned about someone overhearing her voice output, she wears headphones so she is the only one that can "read" her documentation. This could probably work for your father-in-law. Check out the link below for more information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_(screen_reader)

Answer 2

There are voice recognition software programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking for instance that allow a user to verbally dictate info and commands into a computer. So your Father-in-Law could use it to enter the info, or refer to a file, and tell the software which commands to execute in order to create a chart.

However, the real question is whether this would be considered a "reasonable accommodation," which is the legal standard for determining whether or a not a company should accommodate a disabled person's needs.

Other than this, I don't see a way to reasonably accommodate him if charting is a requirement of the job. Having somebody else do it for him is no different than simply hiring the other person, so this wouldn't work.

Answer 3

He could take his own notes with a braille slate and stylus (a braillewriter would probably be too distracting), or he could go the technology route.
There are a number of note taking devices for blind users. Every state has an accessible technology coordination organization that can arrange for demos of various products, training, and sometimes funding:
http://www.resna.org/taproject/at/statecontacts.html
A typical lower end example is at:
http://www.aph.org/products/2005.html#l3
These types of devices are also available with braille output.
Confidentiality laws wouldn't prevent a transcriber/notetaker from being present, I don't believe, but if a someone can get through college and has the skills to be a counsellor, he's undoubtedly more than capable of dealing with his own notes.

Answer 4

He needs to GET A GOOD COMPUTER with a function to make anything he 'writes' (or says if he has a 'voice transcriber') large enough for him to 'read' ... if he has 'any vision' at all, or if he's totally blind, then he can get a recorder and make tapes and label them in Braille. And GOOD FOR HIM! Counseling needs good ones, and because he's 'blind' I'm betting he'll LISTEN to what people are saying maybe better than most counselors ... even me when I was doing that as a Psycholgist.