If a student with visual impairment comes to study with you, what will they experience? What can you or your colleagues do to support them?



Depending on your experience, these may be overwhelming questions – or they may not faze you at all. Either way, I think it is useful to stand back and consider every aspect of your services.

This article focuses mainly on what should happen before the start of a course, or at the very beginning.

Assessment
Students with a disability are entitled to an assessment of their educational needs. The cost of this will be covered by the Disabled Students’ Allowance. This should be carried out by someone with specific knowledge of their disability, such as a Visual Impairment Rehabilitation Worker. Ideally this assessment should happen before the start of the course.

Once an assessment is completed, make sure all staff involved with the student are aware of the results. It will give specific recommendations on how to work with that student, what support they need, and information on how their sight loss affects them.

Visits
Visits before the course starts can be really useful in helping the individual prepare for a move, particularly if they have the chance to meet relevant staff and discuss concerns.
Visits like this also give the staff the chance to foresee any problems that may arise

Training
Staff working with a student should feel confident of their skills and disability awareness. This needs to be addressed early on; the disability awareness of staff is of equal importance to the accessibility of buildings and services.

Orientation and Mobility
With many types of sight loss, a large college can be very daunting. Locating various rooms and buildings may seem impossible. They may not be able to find out practical information independently. Imagine not knowing where the toilets and canteen are or the route to a bus stop.

It may be useful for students with disabilities to arrive a week or so earlier to enable some sessions before the start of the course.

It is a specific skill to teach, and should not be attempted by staff internally without the relevant qualifications and insurance. This is included here because disability support staff may be responsible for contracting orientation services. Orientation and mobility services are available through social services and local societies for the blind.

Subject Accessibility
There may be changes that you can make to ensure a particular subject area more inclusive. Certain subjects such as geography, science, music and art are normally taught in a visual way. For these subjects, some concepts are much easier to comprehend with an understanding of space. Subject lecturers should have given some thought as to how aspects of the course could be taught to students with visual impairment.


Once the course has started...
There are just a couple of things here that may be useful in the first few busy weeks of term:

Preparation for sessions
The most common difficulty that arises is that preparations for teaching sessions are often last minute, and not prepared in an appropriate format for students with visual impairment. Get this sorted and then the student will be able to blend in a little with their sighted peers. This should be sorted in advance of the session; relying on Disability Support Workers takes them away from supporting students.

Ensure that you are familiar with procedures for putting course materials into other formats such as Braille or large print.

Peer support
The beginning of a course presents opportunities for ‘get to know you’ activities. Those with visual impairment may find these particularly useful. With a visual impairment, it may be difficult to see who is around, decide who to approach, and recognise people later.

Many colleges now have peer mentoring services, which can work very well for students with disabilities to help them settle in. Leaving home is often more daunting for people with a disability.

This article focuses on some of the issues to consider at the beginning of a course. It is obviously not an exhaustive list of issues, but it may be useful as a starting point.

For information on how Create Vision UK can help you develop accessible and inclusive services in your university, please see this page: http://www.createvisionuk.com/modules ... tac=post%2016%20education