The people at Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind don’t refer to their students as having disabilities.

Many of them are totally blind, some are legally blind and others are totally deaf, but instead of dwelling on what students and employees can’t do, the school focuses on what they can do.

The school was host to a technological symposium sponsored by the Alumni and Workers Association of Alabama School for the Blind.

The event, which brought everything from talking calculators to Braille printers to the school, was a collaborative effort among the alumni association, the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services and AIDB. Vendors displayed a wide range of assistive devices — from low-technology goods such as raised markers visually impaired can use to mark places on clothes dryers or microwaves to highly expensive goods such as Braille printers that convert charts from a computer to drawings composed of a series of dots used to feel the graph instead of see it.

Closed-circuit televisions were displayed to show citizens how documents can be magnified for better understanding, files can be translated to Braille and NewsLine allows blind people to read about 200 papers from across the state using a toll-free number that dictates articles through a standard telephone.

One device, which looked much like a digital camera attached to a PDA, allows people to take pictures of documents while it reads them back.

"I can sit in my recliner, put my mail in my lap, take a picture and it reads it back to me," said Michael Jones, National Federation of Blind in Alabama president. "I don’t have to fool with computers. It’s just that easy."

Jones also showed off a walking cane that uses sonar to detect nearby objects, sending a vibration through the cane that can be felt by whoever is holding it."The only downside is this technology is that it is terribly expensive," Marler said. "It’s not only because of the research and development, but you just don’t have the wide-open market you have with other products. Their sales are limited."

Closed-caption televisions can cost about 3,000 (Rs. 1,35,000), and Braille notebooks, which are similar to PDAs, are usually priced at 4,600 to 5,000 (Rs. 2,25,000).</br.