Browsing by Subject "Blind"
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Item A comparative study of the self-administration and reader-administration of the MMPI to blind and sighted subjects(Texas Tech University, 1966-05) Brandt, MarilynThe purpose of this study is to determine if reader-administered tests affect blind and sighted individuals differently from self administered tests. The first section of this thesis will present a review of the literature relative to the subject of the proposed investigation. Other aspects of this thesis will include a description of the experimental procedures and design, the results of the testing of the hypotheses, and conclusions and recommendations.Item A comparison of Braille reading and writing instruction in rural and urban areas for students in the state of Texas who are functionally blind(Texas Tech University, 1997-05) Wedding, Jeannette A.The purpose of this study is to compare the differences between rural and urban teachers in their attempts to meet the requirements of H.B. 2277. A review of the literature suggests that no research has been conducted to determine how school districts in rural and urban areas of the state are attempting to meet the mandates regarding instruction of braille reading and writing to students with visual impairments. The significance of this study is to determine whether or not the services offered in rural and urban settings are comparable. Whether a student who is functionally blind attends a rural or urban school should not be the predetermining factor in the level of services he or she receives. If these services are not comparable, concern exists as to whether the individual needs of the student, as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), are being met. Further, this study may be used as a basis for judging improvements made in school districts and to provide insights into methods of complying with the legislation in other states that may be attempting to reach the same goal.Item A study of personality factors and attitudes of the working associates of the blind toward the blind(Texas Tech University, 1967-08) Soho, Susan SilviaThe purpose of this study is to investigate attitudes toward the blind as projected by fellow employees in the work situation. The job is a major part of the life of each person, and the atmosphere there has particular importance for the individual with a disability. An understanding of the attitudes toward the blind held by their sighted working associates will aid the professional personnel working toward the rehabilitation of the blind to gain more insight into the problems of the client in work adjustment. This knowledge of attitudes will also be of value in planning programs of public education and information as well as rehabilitation for the blind. Such a study may also lead to a better understanding of the relationship between various personality variables and attitudes held toward the blind.Item A study of the attitudes of mothers of blind children as compared with the attitudes of mothers of non-blind children(Texas Tech University, 1958-08) Patterson, Robert GeraldNot availableItem The blind leading the blind : frame alignment and membership meetness(2014-08) Jeang, Janice Pam; Young, Michael P.Membership in a social movement organization (SMO) and membership discourse provide space for participants to name and reconstitute their experiences, bodies, and self-images through an embodiment of organizational frames. This reconstitution is especially affirmed in the interaction of marginalized groups, such as individuals with disabilities, whom make up disability focused organizations and social movements. As a group with multiple intersectionalities, as well as an even smaller subsection of various marginalized populations, individuals with blindness face unique barriers when consideration of participants' identities and self-understandings is central in understanding entry as well as ongoing participation in organizations. Disability based organizations, represented by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), must carefully frame the organizational membership of certain individuals whom could threaten cohesion through differing understanding of identities, not revolving around disability. This thesis is an examination of the organizational discourse and the "membership meetness" of participating persons in the NFB. Goffman’s notion of “breaking frame” theoretically informs this analysis of organizational discourse produced by the 'collective blind' in one of the oldest American disability social movement organizations to date. The NFB’s attempt to mitigate the “broken frame” introduced by the incorporation of members whom are not seemingly suitable and do not self identify as blind, into an overwhelmingly blindness based enterprise is to strategically mend existing frames to reinterpret extant social norms. The purpose of this thesis is to use a grounded theory approach, to tease out how membership is framed. In the NFB, frame alignment is accomplished by: framing blindness through allies transformed as friends, framing blindness as a characteristic, framing blindness as respectability, and framing blindness through rhetorical humor in narrative. The above four frames to disability based social movements offers researchers the opportunity to understand how groups attempt to integrate into their activities members who lack “membership meetness” while simultaneously garnering support and advancing interests within the larger movement.Item A case study revealing how preservice art educators develop awareness of the role of language during field work in art education for pupils who are blind or visually impaired(2013-08) Keating, Jannette; Bain, ChristinaWorking collaboratively with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI) and Dr. Kara Hallmark's art education students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), this qualitative case study documented how preservice art teachers' awareness of how to implement language as a teaching tool developed during a participatory observational experience in the segregated special needs art class at TSBVI. My research reveals how the field experience at TSBVI, which included hands-on interaction with pupils who are blind or visually impaired and the role modeling of an experienced special needs art educator, enhanced awareness for preservice teachers about how language can be used effectively in teaching art. This awareness is useful for all educators who include students experiencing vision impairment in the art classroom.Item The determinants of successful self-employment among blind and visually-impaired consumers(2014-12) Emuang, Rafelina G.; Schaller, James L., active 2013Federal and state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies are putting increased emphasis on, and providing more resources for, self-employment for individuals who are blind or visually-impaired since the Rehabilitation Act was amended in 1998. Additional emphasis is being placed on self-employment because VR system consumers – especially those who are blind or visually-impaired – are disproportionately likely to have difficulty obtaining other kinds of competitive employment in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 recession. The purpose of this quantitative study is to identify variables in the administrative records of the federal Rehabilitation Service Agency that impact self-employment outcomes and earnings among blind or visually-impaired consumers. The file, comprised of 13,998 cases closed in Texas from Fiscal Years 2008 through 2012, spans the national recession and subsequent slow recovery. From the original file, 798 cases closed through self-employment were examined by employment status at application, cost of services and returns on investments (ROI). This study found those who were self-employed at application were 50 times more likely to be self-employed at closure. Those who received assessments, diagnosis and treatment, technical assistance, and rehabilitation services were more likely to be self-employed at closure. The variables most closely related to weekly earnings at closure for self-employed consumers were: gender (male), being self-employed at application and receiving some form of rehabilitation technology. Disproportionate numbers of those who were self-employed at application were 55 to 65 and self-identified as White only with weekly earnings at application above the mean for the entire population of consumers whose cases were closed through self-employment. They received the fewest services on average over the shortest period of time at the lost average cost. Returns on investments in serving those who were self-employed at application were positive but small. The average cost of services provided to those employed at application was the highest. However, on average, they experienced decreases in the hours worked per week and weekly earnings. Thus, returns on investments were, on average, negative. Limitations of the study, implications for practice, and future research are discussed.Item Item Natural scene statistics-based blind visual quality assessment in the spatial domain(2013-05) Mittal, Anish; Bovik, Alan C. (Alan Conrad), 1958-With the launch of networked handheld devices which can capture, store, compress, send and display a variety of audiovisual stimuli; high definition television (HDTV); streaming Internet protocol TV (IPTV) and websites such as Youtube, Facebook and Flickr etc., an enormous amount of visual data of visual data is making its way to consumers. Because of this, considerable time and resources are being expanded to ensure that the end user is presented with with a satisfactory quality of experience (QoE). While traditional QoE methods have focused on optimizing delivery networks with respect to throughput, buffer-lengths and capacity, perceptually optimized delivery of multimedia services is also fast gaining importance. This is especially timely given the explosive growth in (especially wireless) video traffic and expected shortfalls in bandwidth. These perceptual approaches attempt to deliver an optimized QoE to the end-user by utilizing objective measures of visual quality. In this thesis, we shall cover a variety of such algorithms that predict overall QoE of an image or a video, depending on the amount of information available for the algorithm design. Typically, quality assessment (QA) algorithms are classiffied on the basis of the amount of information that is available to the algorithm. This thesis will primarily focus on blind QA algorithms, where blind or no-reference (NR) QA refers to automatic quality assessment of an image/video using an algorithm which only utilizes the distorted image/video whose quality is being assessed. NR QA approaches are further classiffied on the basis of whether the algorithm had access to subjective/human opinion prior to deployment. Algorithms which use machine learning techniques along with human judgements of quality during the 'training' phase may be labelled 'opinion aware' algorithms. The first part of the thesis deals with such approaches. While such opinion aware-NR algorithms demonstrate good correlation with human perception on controlled databases, it is impossible to anticipate all of the different distortions that may occur in a practical system and hence train on them. In such cases, it is of interest to design QA algorithms that are not limited in their performance by training data. Approaches which operate without the knowledge of human judgements during the training phase are labelled as 'opinion unaware' (OU) algorithms. We propose such an approach in the second part of the thesis. Further, we propose new VQA algorithms in the last part of the dissertation to address the completely blind VQA problem. The proposed approach quantify disturbances introduced due to distortions and thereby predict the quality of distorted content even without any external knowledge about the pristine natural sources and hence zero shot models.Item The functional hearing inventory: criterion-related validity and interrater reliability(Texas Tech University, 2003-12) Broadston, Pamela MThe Functional Hearing Inventory (FHI), an observational instrument for functional hearing, provides information about how a deafblind child uses his/her residual hearing within his/her natural environment. This study obtained evidence of the validity and reliability of the FHI. In particular, criterion-related validity for the FHI was investigated by correlating it with teachers' and parents' ratings of functional hearing, and the traditional measure of hearing, the audiogram. Interrater reliability for the FHI was studied through correlating the FHI ratings of deafblind subjects by two trained evaluators using point-by-point and consensus methods. The two raters included the researcher and one other rater who was trained by the researcher. The raters observed students in their natural settings and recorded the information on the FHI observation form. The subjects for this study were a purposeful sample of students between the ages of three and twenty-one who were reported on the Federal Deafblind Census. There were 14 participants for whom there was complete information, comprising 6 females (43%) and 8 males (57%). The demographic section indicated that 57% of the participants were male, and 57% were Caucasian. The majority of the participants are in their teens with 21% being in the 7* grade. Over 42% of the participants had a primary disability of deafblindness and four of the participants had a secondary disability of either hearing or visual impairment. Cohen' s kappa was used to measure agreement for criterion validity as well as to determine interrater reliability. Null hypotheses of no relationship between the FHI and teachers' ratings, and between the FHI and parents' ratings were rejected, with a moderate relationship in the former case (K = 0.46, p = 0.0043), and with a somewhat weaker relationship in the latter case (K = 0.22, p = 0.01 ). The null hypothesis between the FHI and the audiogram could not be rejected (K = 0.13, p = 0.26). The null hypothesis for interrater reliability was rejected for environmental conditions/background noise, signal, and response levels. The respective kappas were 0.96 (p < 0.0000001), 0.85 (p < 0.0000001), and 0.81 (p < 0.0000001), all considered to be high levels of association.Item The relationship between blind learning aptitude test scores and braille reading speed and comprehension of children who are blind(Texas Tech University, 1989-12) Baker, Christine PetersonNot available