Talk - Karen Basile Educational Team for Hearing and Vision (ETHV)

Karen Basile from the Educational Team for Hearing and Vision (ETHV) for North East Lincolnshire gave a talk on February 1^st.  Her team consists of a Team leader who is a teacher for the visually impaired (VI), a registered Habilitation Specialist, specialist curriculum support Teaching Assistants and specialist Visual Impairment Teaching assistants.

Currently they look after 60 children in N E Lincolnshire with all kinds of visual problems six of whom are Braille users, the rest being large print users.

Karen explained she assesses children’s functional vision and acts as an advisory teacher to help support pupils with a visual impairment.  All her staff have completed extra training to ensure they are Braille literate and specialist VI and IT literate.  The team teaches children and young people the skills they need for life to enable them to function independently in a sighted world – ranging from visual stimulation programmes and braille skills to mobility and life skills.

Karen started her talk with a practical demonstration giving Rotarians an insight into what it could be like to have loss of vision.  First she showed images on screen which a VI impaired person can have trouble seeing and then Rotarians were asked to don blindfolds and swap chairs with their neighbour.  Karen walked around the room and talked at intervals giving Roatarians the sense of how it is to be VI and for a person to stop talking. 

Then Karen talked about the IT equipment her pupils need for schools and ‘for life’.  She demonstrated three machines:

a Perkins Brailler (a "braille typewriter" costing £1000) - with a key corresponding to each of the six dots of the braille code, a space key, a backspace key, and a line space key.

a BrailleNote (approx. £5000) - a computer for persons with visual impairments. It has either a braille keyboard or a Qwerty Keyboard, a speech synthesizer, and a refreshable Braille display.

an iLoView (£800 per unit) a high definition video magnifier with a 7” screen which can be used for both close up and distance viewing. It allows users to magnify and zoom in on a range of documents and signs.

Her team welcomes financial help from organisations and individuals to purchase this expensive equipment.

Karen left us with a story of the visually impaired woman whom she asked what she wanted most out of life. The woman replied "the opportunity to be equal and the right to be different”.

John Lavin gave a vote of thanks on behalf of the Rotary Club of Grimsby.