1st EBU International Conference on Education, 19-23 July 2000, Montegrotto Terme (Padua) - Italy
I thank the EBU Commission and its Chair, Enzo Tioli, for their invitation to present the actions of ANPEA parents to support school integration of blind and partially sighted children.
The National Association of Parents of Blind or severely visually impaired children, with or without associated disabilities, that we abbreviate ANPEA, is the only association of parents in France to be concerned with the education of blind children, in ordinary schools or in special schools, and the education of blind or partially sighted children with associated disabilities.
We also work with another association of parents for partially sighted children.
Integration has been a key word of ANPEA since its beginning in 1964. In our association we have always considered blind or partially sighted children to be, first of all, children who could learn how to read, write, count and live with the others, like the others, "Like the Others" is the name of our quarterly revue.
A child should stay in his or her family. If he or she is away from the family, it is broken up.
That's why we think that a child is not integrated when he or she attends an ordinary school near a specialised school, where he or she is accommodated, but which is three hundred kilometres away from the family. A child should stay in his or her family.
But in France this is not always possible because, historically, blind schools are not well distributed and some have not changed. They do not always have support services for integration. They refuse multihandicapped blind or partially sighted children, who stay at home with their mother. They keep "good" blind children and frighten parents about integration.
However, in France our legislation is favourable to disabled children's integration. There are two major laws:
For both laws and subsequent laws, parents have been incentives. They have obtained the creation of autonomous support services to complete special schools.
Another problem: in each region there are not many blind or partially sighted children. For a long time they have been put together with deaf children.
Although pedagogies are very different, administrative authorities think they answer the needs of blind children when they have answered the needs of deaf children.
As parents of blind or partially sighted children we have to have their specific needs recognized.
Each child is different but all parents must be very strong to overcome barriers:
We support parents with information, documentation, meetings with others parents and children...
All these difficulties have led ANPEA parents to different actions:
Some of them are autonomous support services created to complete special schools.
These services provide all compensations for visual impairment at ordinary school or at home: learning of Braille and computer systems, low-vision re-education, mobility, motor function development, daily life techniques, daily adaptation of documents, figures, images...
ANPEA itself has created a support service in Suresnes near Paris. The manager is a teacher in order to co-ordinate work between staff of the support service and the teachers at ordinary schools.
Seven years were necessary to create this service for ANPEA parents but this service has a budget to support twenty children and has sixty registered children.
There are currently few children's books published in Braille or large print. Computer systems have made it possible to increase the number of accessible books but few visually impaired people are interested. Small children are excluded because they need to learn touch and pictures. ANPEA regularly promotes adapted books like those of "Les Doigts qui Revent" (Fingers which dream). These are integration books which contain Braille and large print relief in the same book.
All the children in a family can read these books. But ordinary publishers are not interested because Braille books are too expensive.
ANPEA organised a petition which gathered twenty-five thousand signatures for the development of adapted editions.
ANPEA has set up "BrailleNet" which offers a virtual library of two thousand books on line which is accessible to everybody. Another project called "H�lene" will provide the visually impaired with copyright books thanks to safe access.
ANPEA, with two partners, has created "Autonomic", an exhibition for disabled people with a specific space for visually impaired visitors. We regularly write comparative articles on technical equipment in our magazine.
Through BrailleNet, ANPEA participates in tests of new software for internet access and works for the accessibility of internet with WAI. We also participate in testing ordinary games on CD-ROM adapted for blind and partially sighted young children thanks to "concept keyboard".
Back to the: Home Page