In 2010, there were around 39 million blind people worldwide. Currently, approximately 1.4 million children are blind. Visually impaired people are everywhere. They are frequently with a parent or other assistant, using a cane, and sometimes with a seeing eye dog. This is a chart that compares people that are visually impaired and how they read. (left) This is a chart that compares Braille users (red) and non-Braille users (blue). (right)

Seeing eye dogs are allowed anywhere humans frequent. They are also trained to find and follow a clear path, avoid obstacles, stop at curbs, and to know whether it is unsafe to continue. The average seeing eye dog is in service for 8-10 years. Visually impaired children rarely use seeing eye dogs due to their inexperience with animals or fear. Normally, seeing eye dogs accompany adults.

We don’t want children to fear dogs – especially seeing eye dogs. Our goal is to educate children so they’re comfortable around seeing eye dogs.

While children often prefer seeing eye dogs over canes because they feel safe and protected, however, it is often difficult because the children must be properly trained how to handle a seeing eye dog and how to act around them. We want these kids to feel safe and be happy with these service animals.

The Animals Around Us Our project is going to make just that happen and more.

We are going to create a 3-D book that teaches visually impaired children about different animals. Our book will include a description of the animal and three- dimensional footprints of six different animals commonly found as house pets or even in your backyard.

What is our book? Each page will contain a footprint of an animal on the right side and a detailed description of the animal on the left side, including what the animal does to survive, what it eats, and more. Our independent variable is the type of model that the children is asked to examine and draw. Our dependent variable is the accuracy of the drawing by the student being tested. Our controlled variable is that all children tested are in 7 th grade.

How does this help? Our goal is to help the reader to open his or her mind about animals. We hope that when they feel the footprint and start listening to the voice of their parent or someone familiar, they will really be excited about the animal. We hope that they might even discover a new animal and want to do more research on it and maybe even want to consider having one as a pet. We also hope that this book will create a stronger bond between the book’s reader and the visually impaired student.

How will this help the community? Visually impaired children often feel isolated because their interactions with animals and other people is less frequent. Often, their experience with animals is limited to just hearing about them. Our goal is to create a tool allowing them to learn about and experience animals in a new way and perhaps introduce them to animals completely new to them. We also want to provide an opportunity for visually impaired children to bond with their caregivers and others in the community.

Community Contact… The Sight Into Sound staff taught us ways to effectively communicate with visually impaired students. They showed us why presenting our ideas in a book is more effective than on a hand-held board, and why a live reader creates a stronger bond than pre-recorded words. They also demonstrated that more human interaction creates more understanding. They shared their knowledge of, and experience with visually impaired students helping us make a more effective project.

Our Testing… Our testing included having different blindfolded students feel the animals’ footprints so they could experience being blind. The students would touch the footprint and then draw them as accurately as possible based on what they felt. We tested 30 kids on each footprint and recorded data.

Calculations… After all the students were done testing we then calculated the score for each footprint. The way we had to do calculations was we first had to establish how many fingers and/or pads the animal had. For example, a dogs footprint would have a score out of five. We then counted how many fingers and pads the student drew on the index card. Once we were done doing that we then turned them into a percentage.

Results… Our results were recorded by graphing all the percentages and comparing each footprint, whether it was 3D, braille, or cut out. They were all compared together to see what footprint was the most effective. The 3D footprint was and that is what led us to doing a 3D book. (These are just some of the animals footprints and drawings of the students)

We want the kids to feel comfortable around animals like…

dogs, cats, rabbits, and more.

We hope our book will help visually impaired kids learn all about these animals so they will be prepared for anything ahead of them.

If we can help these kids get closer to different animals and learn how to take care of them, so many new opportunities will open for them.

Like having many more seeing eye dogs for the kids…

..or having a new pet

The Animals Around Us We hope to have a huge impact on these students. We want to do more than just give these children basic information about animals. We want to help create relationships between these children and their world-including the people and animals around them. We hope, that in some small way, we can help change their lives and their perspective of the world. We want them to know how it feels to have a pet as a best friend.