Blindfold Games at CUNY

Near the end of each school year, I am invited as a guest speaker to City University of New York’s Baruch College.   This is the third year I’ve talked to a group of visually impaired high school students at Baruch’s Computer Center for Visually Impaired People.
CUNY-kids
I first talked about what lead me to create the Blindfold Games: it grew out of a S.T.E.M. app club at my daughter’s middle school, and the 4th, 5th and 6th graders and I created the first game, Blindfold Racer.
The high school students installed  Blindfold Racer on their iPhones and iPads and played the game for a half hour.  I knew the game was a hit when the room became very quiet: everyone was concentrating on attaining their best score.
I explained why blind people are better when playing this game than are sighted people, and we talked about how this game was designed.  For example, each sentence narrated by my daughter (the voice behind Blindfold Racer) took about 10 “takes”; I’ve included some of these hilarious bloopers in prior blogs;  the bloopers are also featured in the game.
These high school students are learning to program, starting with web page design using HTML and javascript.  When asked if they could have a career in programming, I mentioned the guys who created RS Games: several visually impaired people who developed a great cloud-based game server.  They are currently employed by some of the largest software companies, doing web accessibility testing, quality assurance and project planning.  Other blind people I have met through these games are employed as software engineers, or have their own company where they provide I.T. and networking consulting.
If you would like to have me speak at your event or meeting, feel free to contact me.
 
 

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