This online teaching resource aims to support the learning of braille by sighted people (this is most relevant to those involved in teaching braille). New Opportunities Fund and National Library for the Blind.

Braille and Moon Fonts - links to sites with free downloads of fonts.

Mobility and Independence online resources - Steps to Independence

This online resource presents key issues and recommendations for those involved in teaching mobility and independence to visually impaired children. The content authors were Sue Pavey, Graeme Douglas, Mike McLinden, and Steve McCall of the Visual Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR) at the University of Birmingham. The DfES, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, OPSIS and RNIB jointly funded this research.

Touch Typing Tutor

Touch Typing Tutor is a software programme which was designed in 2000 to assist teaching touch typing skills to visually impaired children. A short description of it is given below. The programme was previously available as freeware but is no longer down-loadable from this website. If you would like a copy, please forward a blank CD to:

VICTAR
School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
and a copy will be forwarded to you including the operating instructions.

The programme was specially designed to meet the needs of visually impaired people. For example, it provides the means to set up different colours, dimensions and fonts for the exercise text displayed, and has speech capability. These features make it possible for Touch Typing Tutor to be operated independently by the child. This program is easy to use, with a full set of touch typing exercises supplied. Additional exercises can easily be created using any text editor which is capable of writing plain ASCII files (e.g. the Windows 'Notepad'), and organised into lessons. This means that you are able to use Touch Typing Tutor to teach according to the scheme of your choice - no particular approach is built into the program itself - even replacing the entire suite of lessons with your own if you wish.

Recommended standards for teaching and supporting learners with visual impairment in Further Education in England and Wales

The document below presents a set of standards for teaching and supporting learners with visual impairment in further education in England and Wales. These standards apply to the AdCert / PG Cert – Visual Impairment Further Education (Distance Education) course. RNIB, DfES.

• Standards [pdf - 127 kb]
• Standards [Word.doc - 147 kb]