Our initial meeting with Spanish organisers José Ángel Abraldes Rodeyro and Montse Lopez with NCBI coordinating staff members Edel O Connell and Caroline Lane
We are delighted to announce two exciting projects taking place in summer 2017 and in the Spring of 2018.
Having secured funding from eir’s “Connecting Communities fund”, we will hold two residential Assistive Technology (AT) camps at the University of Limerick this summer. We are delighted to have support from UL Disability Access Services and the use of their new state of the art Assistive Technology laboratory.
The camps will cater for children with sight loss from 10 to 14 years and from 15 to 17 years. According to Toni O Dwyer, National Services Manager NCBI South “The objective is to improve access so that children can use AT with greater confidence and enable access to information with greater ease and efficiency in fun and interactive sessions. Such skills are not only important for the preparation of transitional stages such as moving to secondary school or further education but are essential life skills that enhance communication skills and improve access for people with sight loss.”
We are also taking part in a student exchange program with the Spanish sight loss organisation ONCE, at its educational resource centre at Pontevedra. This centre offers a range of courses for children and young people who are blind and vision impaired, including assistive technology, independent travel skills, self-advocacy and Braille, among others. The exchange program will involve a group of Irish children between 15 and 17 years of age travelling to Spain in August 2017 and hosting a group of Spanish children here in Ireland in April 2018.