[GONZALEZ] Okay. about that technicality. Of course, technology never does what you want when you want it to do it. So, anyway, the whole thing about so much of the brain being devoted to visual functioning really leads to why so many kids that are multiply disabled also have vision problems. And really, about 80% of our children are learning, typical children, are learning to visual cues. So one of the problems is people -- kids that do have their the visual system intact, it is really hard for them to do that to have that natural incidental learning that occurs for most kids especially from birth to age five. It becomes a big challenge for our kids that are multiply disabled. Now when you are looking at communication and literacy with this population, you know personally, I think of communication and literacy as being two separate tasks, speaking and reading and writing. But for this population, they are really intertwined and it is kind of hard to separate where communication ends and literacy begins. But, really, I like to think of both of these skills for kids with multiple disabilities as a way for them to share with other people. And, the biggest problem I see is with this population, people generally are not using a symbol system in the correct way. A lot of times people are trying to use a symbol set the student that is multiply and visually impaired is not able to access. That is the problem we are going to try to talk about answers to, today. So, a simple system, the ultimate symbol system is, of course, print or braille and our spoken language. Usually with this population, the common alternative, when you can't access print or the spoken language, would be some kind of similar photograph-based system. are couple pictures down there that are examples of a communication device. The two biggest problems I see as far as the reason why kids with multiple disabilities aren't able to be successful with communication and literacy, is first of all that the materials with symbols, generally speaking, are very visually complicated; too visually complicated for most of our kids with visual impairments. And the other problem is that often times the student’s learning medium, how they are gaining information, isn't considered and because of
[GONZALEZ] Okay. about that technicality. Of course, technology never does what you want when you want it to do it. So, anyway, the whole thing about so much of the brain being devoted to visual functioning really leads to why so many kids that are multiply disabled also have vision problems. And really, about 80% of our children are learning, typical children, are learning to visual cues. So one of the problems is people -- kids that do have their the visual system intact, it is really hard for them to do that to have that natural incidental learning that occurs for most kids especially from birth to age five. It becomes a big challenge for our kids that are multiply disabled. Now when you are looking at communication and literacy with this population, you know personally, I think of communication and literacy as being two separate tasks, speaking and reading and writing. But for this population, they are really intertwined and it is kind of hard to separate where communication ends and literacy begins. But, really, I like to think of both of these skills for kids with multiple disabilities as a way for them to share with other people. And, the biggest problem I see is with this population, people generally are not using a symbol system in the correct way. A lot of times people are trying to use a symbol set the student that is multiply and visually impaired is not able to access. That is the problem we are going to try to talk about answers to, today. So, a simple system, the ultimate symbol system is, of course, print or braille and our spoken language. Usually with this population, the common alternative, when you can't access print or the spoken language, would be some kind of similar photograph-based system. are couple pictures down there that are examples of a communication device. The two biggest problems I see as far as the reason why kids with multiple disabilities aren't able to be successful with communication and literacy, is first of all that the materials with symbols, generally speaking, are very visually complicated; too visually complicated for most of our kids with visual impairments. And the other problem is that often times the student’s learning medium, how they are gaining information, isn't considered and because of