Comprehensive support to children and young people with a visual impairment

Blindness and vision impairment are type of sensory impairment which profoundly affects an individual’s ability to access information, communicate, socialize, move around and orientate. Associated impairments like deafblindness, autism spectrum disorders, mental and developmental disorders make things on any person, especially a child or a young person, that much harder. Structured and continuous support should be provided to families and children or young people with a visual impairment from their birth as only early intervention measures can significantly contribute to an integrated personal development and to empowerment of an individual with a visual impairment and of the entire family. Moreover, help and support must also be provided to experts working with such families, as well as employers and wider social environment.

The Centre IRIS – Centre for Education, Rehabilitation, Inclusion and Counselling for the Blind and Partially Sighted developed a project called Comprehensive support to children and young people with a visual impairment and to children and young people with learning difficulties. A set of interconnected activities carried out in the scope of the project provided an all-round support to members of the target group from the day they were born to the day they entered the labour market. As many as 344 children and young people with a visual impairment participated in the project, 40 education sessions which involved as many as 580 participants were delivered, and over 60 different institutions joined the project. Additionally, the project supported the translation of over 2,400 pages in braille (from over 880 standard pages), production of 10 tactile books for children, translation of documents related to different contests into braille to be accessible for 274 blind or visually impaired school-age children, translation of print documents into braille for over 200 contests, development of 30 didactic tools for blind and visually impaired school-age children, and organization of a walk in Ljubljana for the blind and visually impaired which brought together over 100 participants. Moreover, a two-day conference bringing together more than 100 international experts was held in the scope of the project and delivering a manual Comprehensive intervention, lifelong learning and social inclusion of persons with a visual impairment which contained nearly 60 expert contributions written as a result of cooperation with schools and various visual impairment organizations at home and abroad.     

“The project provides a solid base for systemic change in the form of a national centre which would provide comprehensive support to children and young people with a visual impairment,” said mag. Nina Čelešnik Kozamernik. “I believe that the results of our dedicated work speak for themselves and that we have raised awareness of what children and young people with a visual impairment as well as children and young people with learning difficulties really need. We will continue our efforts to further help these individuals and their loved ones,” she added.