This week’s Talking Vision delves into both blind sport and the support Vision Australia offers to children clients.
First up, Stella is joined on the program by Children and Youth Services Librarian Sarah Bloedorn from the Vision Australia library to discuss an upcoming webinar.
The VA library supports people with a range of print disabilities, not just blindness or low vision, and will hold a special dyslexia webinar aimed at parents, teachers and librarians to provide information about diagnosing dyslexia in children and the supports available.
“We cater for people with dyslexia as it comes under the umbrella of a print disability, anybody who has a print disability can use our library,” Sarah said.
“I look after the children’s area and I would say about 80% of the [children clients] we have in the library currently have dyslexia, rather than a vision impairment, so it’s a huge chunk,” she said.
Stella is also joined by VA Early Childhood Specialist Teacher Patricia Izzard, who discusses what her role as part of the Children’s Services team involves.
“When I tell people what my job is they immediately imagine me working in classroom or somewhere else with children who are blind or have low vision,” Patricia said
“My role is about working with the family or sig other in child’s life to build their knowledge skill set, understanding of what it is they can do for their child to teach them the skills that they need to continue on with their development as all children do, but in a slightly different way,” she said
“For instance we know children that are blind will go on to learn what all other children learn and do what all other children do, but the way they learn those skills is slightly different.”
This week’s program then finishes with Sebastian Petrovic, who discusses Australian Blind Football’s first international tour to India recently.
“The blind soccer team should be very proud to have the opportunity to travel abroad and train with professionals with experience and compete in an international friendly match. It’s really put Australia on the map,” Sebastian said.
“It created history, with a lady in the team, Shae Skinner, becoming the first woman to represent Australia in an international game,” he said.
You can listen to this week’s Talking Vision here, or on the player below: