From left, Riley Brice, 10, Andie Greer, 9, and  Lilie Gotch experience vision impairment goggles  last week at Harvey Swanson Elementary. Photo by Patrick McAbee. 

By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Life with a disability— last week Brandon School District fourth grade students spent a few hours experiencing the challenge often facing those with special needs.
“My hope is that students really get the idea of what it feels like to have this,” said Diane Zedan, director of special education and preschool programs with Brandon Schools. “I see such amazement about the equipment and the process.”
There were seven different stations set up around the gym of Harvey-Swanson Elementary school, and students from each class came in to try out each one.
At the fine motor impairment table, they learned how it would feel if they couldn’t hold a spoon like they had learned, or how it would feel if they couldn’t close their hand into a fist all the way.
For problems with muscles and bones, they learned how to walk with the use of canes. There was even a station just for wheelchairs and walkers that students had to maneuver through doors.
There was a whole table dedicated to Autism Spectrum disorders, where students learned about Autism and how life might look if they were on the spectrum.

At the learning differences table, students learned about learning disabilities, such as Dyslexia, as well as how they would have to write if they couldn’t differentiate some letters from each other.
There was a table about speech impairment, where students learned about people who couldn’t communicate vocally the way they do.
For the table on those who are deaf or hard of hearing, students learned about sign language and how people who don’t hear well or at all communicate with the rest of the world.
At the visual impairments table, students got to test goggles that showed them how different visual impairments look, learn about braille and even try navigating with just a walking cane and their 4 other senses.
“They like the wheel chairs, the writing, anything hands on,” said Zedan. “There’s even a bag of books on disabilities that teachers are reading with their students.”
After a spending a class period in the gym, students told their teachers what their favorite part was and what they learned, and many students took away different lessons from different tables. From the visual impairment station, most students had a general consensus: that the goggles simulating different visual impairments, such as glaucoma, color blindness and severe vision loss, looked very different from their normal eye sight.