Our Services
Page 23
Skills and support for children
For blind, deafblind and vision-impaired children, growing up in a sighted world can be challenging- both for the child and their family.
While sighted children use their vision to learn, vision-impaired children need to be taught basic everyday activities. The Foundation's Developmental Orientation and Mobility and Adaptive Daily Living Instructors work with young members from birth to help them to become and remain independent.
Developmental Orientation and Mobility Instructor Denise Guitar says that it is never too soon to begin teaching children these transferable skills. "It is about teaching sensory and developmental concepts that allow them to keep up with their peers while also giving them a sense of self-worth and boosting their confidence," says Denise. Specialised instructors teach things such as:
- Self-care skills, i.e. dressing, eating.
- Indoor/outdoor environment concepts: teaching concepts of what is a floor, ceiling, roads
- Body image concepts: left, right, top, bottom, front, back
- Measurement concepts: estimation of time, distance
- Sensory development: Learning to use hearing, touching and any residual vision, echo-location when moving
- Use of mobility aids: cane, adapted mobility devices, push toys, guiding techniques
- Orientation skills: relative position of objects, use of landmarks and cues.
Denise works with Áine Kelly-Costello (11), and last year a big focus was preparing Áine for starting at a new intermediate. "Áine and I visited the school to learn the different routes. I used a tactile map to familiarise her with her new environment."
Áine's mother Katherine believes that this service goes hand-in-hand with Áine's academic education and has helped make her the confident, outgoing girl she is today. "Seeing Áine out walking the dog independently and playing with friends is a great feeling. Denise has helped Áine develop the skills to look after herself, be safe, and the confidence to get out there and try new things."
Page 24
70 years of talking books
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Talking Books in New Zealand which were first available in 1937. They were slow-playing gramophone records (24 revolutions per minute) with the average talking book occupying about six records.
Around 137 titles were bought from the American Foundation for the Blind and by March 1937, 24 talking book machines had been delivered. Thirty-four years later the hard-to-handle records were replaced with talking books on tape.
In 1966 the Foundation opened its own talking book studios enabling the recording of books published in New Zealand, as well as titles published overseas which could not be purchased from other talking book producers.
In 1986 the Library started to produce books in the four track format – i.e. a standard audio cassette which plays at half the speed of a normal cassette, so almost six hours of sound can be recorded onto a 90-minute cassette.
It was also around this time that magazines and information began to be recorded. Today members can choose from 22 magazines on tape from Woman's Weekly to National Geographic.
By 1988 2,827 titles had been transferred from the former cassette format to the four track format. The Foundation now has over 8,200 talking books in its collection still played on the four-track talking book machines.
In 1996 the Foundation joined a consortium to develop the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY). Since then talking book titles have been recorded in the DAISY format in preparation for the future move to fully digital players.
Member Marcel Oats says "Talking books give blind and vision-impaired people the pleasure of reading and being carried away to different worlds of information and entertainment that would otherwise be closed off. Books are something everyone should be able to enjoy."