CALL is still neglected by most teachers of English. They either find it a waste of time or treat it as a game. The potential offered by the machines is covered by futuristic visions of teacherless classes where students are led by a robotic-looking master that gives instructions. Computers are accused of taking over the role hitherto assigned to human beings. At the same time, they are strict, rigid, and devoid of emotions. The best that can be heard of computers in the English class is that they display colourful images, yet the linguistic content is very poor. Besides, students sit silently in front of computer screens clicking mice and watching what is happening. I have seen and heard different reactions of teachers of foreign languages when I said that I used computers in my class. One of my colleagues even said that he did not have time for funny games. My intention here, however, is not criticism of those who do not believe in a new teaching/learning tool, but presentation of some of the elements of CALL in teaching blind students.

- Word processors can be used for practising writing skills by manipulating the text, for improving spelling by devising exercises that involve spellcheck features; teachers of the blind can mark digitally saved essays that can be analysed by students themselves;

- Language software offering numerous tasks that check grammar and vocabulary in many cases allow the teacher to customise the content that can be specially assigned to a particular student or a group of students; students given immediate feedback by the program can set their own pace;

- Communication software helps students practise various communication strategies and behaviours, including non-verbal signals;

- The Internet is an alternative source of information; because of limited resources in Braille, the Internet is often the only venue where some information is accessible for the blind; IRC is the socialising room that invites anyone willing to chat regardless of disabilities.

This time colourful display showing photos of Warsaw could not be seen by Laski students. But colourful design does not apply to them whether it is stand-alone language software or a website. Blind users do not care how many dogs and cats run on the screen. It does not mean they should not work with well-designed software, but their main interest zeroes in on the textual content. Practicality is what attracts them to the machines, how much they can learn from the very hardware and obviously software. Blind students in Laski primary school urge to find out how prolific computers can be, how much information can be extracted from them. Their enjoyment is magnified by diversity of output forms. Brailled copy is only one possibility. The content can be read out by a speech synthesizer or a sound card. Text can be displayed on a Braille line. The latter two forms can work together, which means that information is received via two senses simultaneously.

Tactile stimulation compensates visual cues that sighted learners receive during classes of foreign languages. Snyder and Kesselman (1972) concluded that touching played a significant role in learning the new language. Nonetheless, tactile stimulation only makes sense provided the students have had a special training before. So relevance of tactile stimuli is very much determined by appropriate a priori training. Still, the author believes and is in accord with various teachers of English that embossed pictures can have an educational value and can abet an individual in the attempt to master a foreign or second language.

Nikolic (1987:63) states:

"The process of learning a foreign language should be supported by tactile stimuli. The preferred way of expressing this idea is that alternatives to visual input should be found in tactile and auditory stimuli. One of the "golden rules" of teaching is that the more senses one engages, the quicker the learning process."

Computer-assisted language learning is the venue where sound may coexist with touch. Soft Braille display provides a tactile textual output, while synthetic speech or sounds tunnelled through sound cards give out auditory presentation. However, as many other aspects of education of the blind, not everything is so obvious. Synthetic speech is at first rather difficult to understand, especially if it is a foreign language. The first language does not seem to bring so much difficulty in comprehending. Primary school pupils in Laski are trained to control computers primarily through the speaking output device. Despite initial unwillingness to listen to robotic sounds, they master basic computer skills and get accustomed to SMP, which is one of Polish speaking synthesizers. A Spanish student in UWC showed incredible listening comprehension when "reading" a Spanish text uttered by Jaws harnessed to Eloquence speech synthesizers. The speed he set up exceeded the number of words per minute that even a very quick speaker can pronounce. Even though his comprehension of the listened text was never tested, we can assume that he must have understood the output, because otherwise this activity would not have made any sense. Besides, there was no external reason why he had to accelerate the speech so considerably. He looked very comfortable with the velocity of words flowing from the computer speakers.

Figure 1. Braille display. Click to enlarge.

Tactile device can show the currently selected application, yet it means that the user needs to release the keys and check with the Braille line, which is rather onerous in this particular case. Nonetheless, Braille output proves its value in other situations. D., the blind student, did not rely so heavily on speaking output when he switched into English. He found it more difficult to understand the machine speaking English. Short messages did not cause any trouble, but longer passages had to be read using soft Braille display. The primary advantage of the Braille output over the auditory presentation is that the former gives the user full control over the text and that it is the reader who determines the reading pace and within a few touches on keyboard or Braille display buttons, she can land and stop on a desired word. A system of small tab buttons lets her bring the cursor to the selected position. Those controls serve to delete characters. Each of the two output systems has its own advantages and drawbacks. The integration of the two forms a powerful, multisensory set.

Touch screen can inform a blind user about simple graphics displayed on the screen. Technology has recently served new devices that make the production of tactile images much easier and convenient. Just like sighted children that are surrounded, and even overwhelmed, by the world of images, the blind can eventually obtain another way of communicating with the world of the sighted. It would seem so natural for blind learners to be able to decipher lines and dots on a tactile map as touch is one of the most used senses in exploring the world. "Watching" a map or a simple graphics by the blind is not as straightforward as by sighted children. Fingers do not see perspective, have more problems with proportions and cannot distinguish colours. In tactile graphics colours are often replaced with different textures. Despite these difficulties, tactile displays should be introduced to different subjects, including classes of English. Young people these days combine words and graphics, visible on the streets, or to be exact on walls in the form of graffiti. Their blind peers lack such stimuli to express themselves and are therefore limited in their communication. A CALL instructor can thank hardware inventors for yet another fancy peripheral device. Overlay keyboard, also known as membrane, or more commonly called "concept keyboard" is a machine that makes paper "speak." It is a flat board with a matrix of touch sensitive keys. The number of keys varies from version to version. An overlay with an image is placed on top of the board. A user follows the graphic with his fingers, and he presses an area. The computer reads out a message assigned to the area. From a communication and social point of view it is important to note that the device is not specifically designed for the blind, but is primarily meant for manually impaired children, or simply for young users of computers who find it too laborious to use QWERTY keyboard.

This device can find its way in mainstream schooling as a major teaching aid, regardless of the level of school. A little piece of electronics also fulfils a social role. Both blind and sighted peers are seated at the same machinery, which basically has nothing specially implemented for the blind. This group has a genuine feeling of full integration. This feeling must be supported by a well-structured and professional training. The only piece that reveals the presence of blind students in class is a tactile paper overlay. Here only teacher’s as well as students’ imagination limit ideas that can be embossed on paper. This imagination must nonetheless take into consideration blind people’s ability to interpret images. Therefore, too many details make the image indecipherable. But unlike "silent images," talking pictures provide both tactile and auditory information. What is touched can be simultaneously described acoustically and/or verbally. Such audio enforcement becomes a concrete link for information bricks that construct conceptual schemata in the mind of the blind.

Because the user can put any picture (including tactile image) on the board and with a help of special software, he can insert a message that will be read by a synthetic speech, or record his own voice that digitally stored will be played via sound card, overlay keyboard gives autonomy to learners. That is why such a device can be used in the English class in numerous ways. It can be the teacher that provides students with voice input and then just checks their comprehension by devising tasks related to the audio information and the corresponding image. But, naturally, students themselves can record their parts, which will require clear and proper pronunciation, so that their peers could understand the information.

Hardware inventors are currently working on a combine that will allow the blind to access pictures, graphical user interfaces, maps and text. A German company, Frank Audiodata, with its partners, have devised a prototype of TACIS (Tactile - Acoustic - Computer - Interaction - System). Users with sight deficiencies will be able to receive information using three media: tactile, tonescopes and speech (Thongaard, 2000). Similarly to overlay keyboard graphical element is associated to output that can be produced by synthetic speech or a musical tone. The important difference is that TACIS is much more precise, and smaller elements can have their own acoustic data. Hardware that composes TACIS is IBM-compatible PC with special Windows software, the A3-sized touchpad and the embosser.

Figure 2. TACIS - a prototype

These two devices introduce the blind to the world of graphics equalling their chances to live with pictures. More and more information is pictorial and this stimulation is used in modern EFL textbooks. Visual communication thanks to high technology has a chance to become a component of blind people's repertoire. Describing pictures that so far have been out of their sensory abilities can be as normal as it is for the sighted.

Stand-alone computers attract potential foreign language learners with the myriad of functions that can stimulate the process of learning. They activate more than just one sense at a time, owing to which language can be absorbed easier. A room filled with computers could be perceived as a modern language laboratory. Its function, however, does not confine to reading drills that were to perfect learners' pronunciation. Old cabins with headphones isolated students one from another, and it was virtually impossible to talk about any interaction. Monastic work on one's pronunciation resembled conditioning described in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Computers networked in LANs and WANs or hooked to the Internet apart from their inherent features have given users an opportunity for distant communication.

The communication media included in an average network are mail, short message sender and simultaneous chat application. Today's interface reading systems even allow relay chatting. It is not the most convenient communication solution for the blind since the concept consists in reading more than one line of text at the same time. This is particularly troublesome when five or more users are chatting together. Even the sighted users sometimes find it hard to follow the flow of messages popping in the chatting box. My observation is that an average trained blind user familiar with his Braille line enjoys this uncoordinated dispute. In a group of blind and partially sighted students one of the most excited was a blind student. Despite the construction, the new conversation medium appeared to really appeal to him. He did not complain about his fate. He rather found it challenging to grasp as many messages as possible and to carry on his dyadic exchange with one of his peers. This local IRC is similar to its Internet equivalent when it comes to emboldening more timid and less confident students. In real life situations blind participants of social events are noticeably less active. Intimacy of online rooms turns shy people into talkative entertainers.

Although speaking should primarily be done with speech organs, this new medium boosts students confidence showing them that they can be equally valuable members of a community. Higher confidence parallels the improvement of language that is activated owing to remote chatting and used more frequently. Therefore, both linguistic and social activation can be accounted for the comfortable chatting conditions knitted by webbed computers. Voices can be heard that virtual socialising endangers real-life contacts between the blind and the sighted. They anticipate that the blind feeling more comfortable with keyboard interaction would be unwilling to leave their place in search of public places where they could entertain themselves. The question is, however, to what extent have they been doing it so far? Is it that virtual contacts are replacing face-to-face conversations? My answer is that IRC, chatting, e-mailing, participating in newsgroups, etc., offer more choices to socialise. Second of all, giving more does not necessarily mean giving worse. The aim is to create diverse access to numerous facilities and open gates hitherto locked and barred to the blind. The introduction of computers to social life of the blind ought to activate them rather than conceal from the rest of society. It can be assumed that online communication will prove that the blind can be equal members of any community and will encourage this group to more overt and dynamic in cooperation with the world of sighted.

Students in Laski have also put their fingers on synchronous user-to-user programs embedded in Avlan Symantec and Unix systems. Randomly paired-in students had to first initiate a conversation and find out who their partner was. This task in real-life situation is difficult for some learners. The primary reason is lack of vision, which makes it impossible for the blind to determine if there is anyone around that could possibly become an interlocutor. Features like Talk in Unix or Phone in VMS are more controllable for the blind user than IRC. It is a good venue to practise turn-taking, a communication skill that in substantial part relies on sight and nonverbal signalling. Since there is no common keyboard symbol that represents the moment of finished utterances (period means only the end of a sentence, but the "speaker" may want to continue his turn), the writer decided to choose the slash key (/) as a signal of a finished thought.

Figure 3. Talk in Unix of two blind students. Entries are closed by / sign. (Click to enlarge)

Thanks to this system, blind users can concentrate on the message and do not need to bother that their partners will wait too long for the reply. In a real conversation blind people very often "freeze" not to disturb the incoming voice. Such behaviour is observed to be even stronger when foreign language is used. Blind attentive learners try to absorb both the message itself as well as linguistic strategy used to convey this message. The result of this can be, and frequently is, the case of either a delayed or too early reaction to words uttered by their interlocutors. Mistiming in turn taking causes annoyance among sighted partners in a conversation. They mainly think that blind do not comprehend properly, so they repeat what they have said or even transform their sentences into simpler and less complex ones. This, in turn, leads to confusion among the blind. Hence, communication can be broken or at least severely disturbed. Sighted people then become discouraged and cease the conversation. In online chatting, both parties rely upon the same means. Both of them have their own fields into which text is keyed in and the same assortment of symbol keys on the keyboard. More advanced users take advantage of latest IRC breakthroughs - emoticons or facial expressions. IRC class has one definite disadvantage, though some teachers would call it an asset. During an online conversation all you can hear is clattering of keyboards. Students generally stay silent, apart from some monosyllabic expressions of awe, enjoyment or irritation. This should not discourage EFL teachers from incorporating IRC into their class. Keyboard chatting is not supposed to replace real conversations. This serves only as an activator of and addition to regular speaking classes. Moreover, it enriches teaching repertoire and has some salient effect on social rehabilitation of blind learners.

Apart from synchronous communication tools networks endow users with asynchronous communication gadgets. The most popular and the most widely used is e-mail. Electronic mailman has enough stamina to deliver any number of letters to anyone living on this planet. The only condition is that both the sender and addressee possess their own e-mail addresses and access to computers with the Internet connection.

Methodological advantages of implementing e-mail system into English courses are obvious (see also Walicki, 1998). Blind students have received a tool that allows them to exchange messages with keypals independently. Their privacy does not have to be violated because Braille is no longer a barrier and letters can be typed by themselves, so the third person does not have to be engaged. This free exchange can be extremely motivating, which is visible in Laski high school, where students fly their mail in cyberspace directing it to students from different schools and countries.

Computer skills along with a good command of English wired students from Laski with UWC community who take advantage of the Internet and e-mail sending information back and forth in English. Methodologically, this international communication can be looked upon as a way of practising learned linguistic items. Laski students expressing their opinions about exchanges with UWC students claim that they benefit from the combination both socially and linguistically. Primarily, they are in touch with a microcosm, as UWC schools are called, which makes them feel an integral part of scholastic world. Secondly, UWC students involuntarily became teachers of English since they expose the blind students to good examples of the language. E-mailing develops writing skills that are specific to this new means of correspondence. Yet, written communication that involves speaking skills available within a click of the mouse has entered cyberspace. IRC and simultaneous talk via the keyboard have recently been attracting thousands of Internet users. Writing here is only the craft that transports words through cyberspace. Words form the cargo that is in the shape of a combination of written and spoken language.

Internet services have mushroomed over the last decade. New and more sophisticated ones are bound to appear and their availability should also grow fast. When it comes to blind users, as long as software needed to enjoy new Internet facilities follow current patterns and designs, should also be able to join the Internet society soon after. Online communication is a fact and because of its widespread popularity should be perceived as a norm rather than a fictional happening. Adventurous EFL teachers, who are lucky enough to work in well-equipped schools, ought to consider seriously inclusion of IRC, Newsgroups, Talk or BBS services into their foreign language curricula. CALL is not a computer game any more. Younger and younger users become friends to the keyboard and mouse. Chatting is a written representation of spoken language. It is not only a linguistic phenomenon but an amazing social formation. New abilities need to be learned. IRC, in particular, requires good skimming and scanning techniques to follow a conversation with two or more users at the same time. This new skill requires lots of thinking and preparation when blind students are regarded prospective users of a system.

Some Internet services can find their place in the English class, while others can only accompany the main course, but still can be the integral part of it. They can be either utilised as a way of collecting information that will be worked on later in the class or as a follow-up activity that encloses a discussed unit. Naturally, one option can live without the other and a teacher of English has no need to discard all other teaching techniques and materials he/she has used so far. What matters is appreciation of potential offered by networked computers and exploitation of features inherent to these machines.

Despite the tendency to translate programs and operating systems into Polish, original English versions are still available. With more effort, other language versions can be purchased as well. It means that computer systems can become sources of vocabulary. Starting with very basic words that frequently have their real life counterparts, the teacher can expand the language, eventually aiming at fluent communication over the Net. However, a claim that an online chat is the ultimate goal of this procedure is hair raising. CALL does not mean to chain students to their workstations, which display language programs inviting students to click the mouse pointer on an icon or another image. It does not restrict classes to typing nor with more sophisticated software invites students to record a phrase or a sentence measuring the user's pronunciation. This is a demonising perception of computer-assisted language learning. Computers and network are only an addition to modern trends in foreign language teaching methodology. No one can deny either their existence and growing significance in such social aspects as work, shopping, or entertainment. That is the reason, among others, why networked computers deserve their place in a foreign language syllabus. The power of computers lies in their versatility.

Polish schools head for modern computer networks setting up more and more computers. They either use their own sources to arrange the equipment or count on external benefactors who hook these schools to global networks. The increasing number of primary school pupils and high school students put their hands on computer keyboards and mice playing with multimedia software or surfing the cyberspace looking for and analysing information relevant to different school subjects. Polish educational system is also targeting at integration of fully-abled students with people with diverse disabilities. Blind students have been rara avis in the mainstream schooling so far. There have been different reasons for this, yet problems to provide them with learning material and inability to read and write in Braille by the teachers discouraged the blind from choosing mainstream schools. The staff has often refused to accept blind students to their school because they were not prepared to teach them. Whenever a blind student however found his place among sighted peers, the teachers have been more than lenient to him allowing him not to write or read too many class tasks. The result is that a significant number of primary school pupils finished their schools without being able to read and write. Computer technology brings hope both for the students and their teachers. Braille is not an obstacle any more. Blind and sighted students use the same means to write (or type) and read information. They can work in groups or pairs exchanging their ideas not only by speaking them out, but also in the written form. Integration classes or even schools are far from mushrooming in Poland. Nevertheless, those that are founded do not seem to be properly equipped to meet their disabled students’ needs. It looks like the idea of real integration, these days more popularly called immersion, is only wishful thinking. Lack of most basic machines to produce material in Braille, paired up with shortage of new textbooks in Braille, questions the idea of putting together different groups of students. Even though the concept of integrated classes appeals to many minds, the decision makers have not gone beyond documents. The reality bites severely, and the main argument is funds. The cost of a single piece of hardware can be hair-raising, however, it is a drop in the ocean when the whole cost of the educational reform is concerned. Teachers of English who are eager to incorporate computers into their syllabi are the most solid evidence that computer equipment is not only for IT classes and cost can spread across many other subjects. The computer for blind students does not have to be confined only to them. It is a regular machine with regular peripheral devices that happens to have some extra tools so that the blind student can use it.

It is, therefore, only good will and a bit of more careful planning to create sufficient conditions for disabled students to study in mainstream schooling. Otherwise, the blind, for example, will attain only satisfaction from finishing regular schools, and not much more. Undoubtedly, there are places where blind students are cared for professionally and are provided with necessary aids. The concern of the author is focused upon those that struggle with obstacles that do not relate directly to school subjects but with an inappropriate approach resulting not from ill intentions but poor preparation of schools and people.