Tips for Useful Material

As the time goes, both your visually impaired student and yourself will experiment and evaluate several types of material or tools to use in your teaching to improve your student's effective learning. Here are some of them:

• When you use the overhead projector, try several colours because sometimes, certain colours might be too dark or too bright to read easily.

• When you write on a black or white board, try several sizes of writing and a variety of colours of chalk or dry erase markers. Sometimes, the size of writing may facilitate your student's reading and his/her comprehension. Also, certain colours of chalks or markers may make it difficult or impossible for your student to read and understand the content of the notes on the board.

• You may either contact CNIB to get resources such as special lined sheets of paper. The lines are darker, thicker and are more spaced out, making it easier for your visually impaired students to find and write on the lines.

• When you use the projector to share the content of a page or a presentation on the Internet, make sure that the background is not too dark and that the writing is adapted to a bigger size.

• When your visually impaired student is working on a project on the computer, allow your student to write and print his/her project with the most comfortable size for him/her to read it easily.

• When your student needs to highlight some information on a page, find out first if he/she is uncomfortable with any colours. If he/she is unable to read the highlighted information because the colour interferes or affect his/her reading, you could either make the following change or ask your student to do it. You could add a large frame around the information so it would be both easier to find and read it.

• Always make sure that every person involved with your visually impaired student use these adaptations as well. Some classes, like Music or Physical Education can also contact you, the resource teacher or CNIB for obtaining ideas and resources to have your visually impaired student learn effectively and participate safely in other educational environments.

• Have your student use a powerful magnifying glass to facilitate the reading of documents such as books. Also enquire if you are legally able to photocopy these pages for the purpose of enlarging the writing to facilitate your student's reading and comprehension.

• Sometimes, some movies are also adapted for the visually impaired as there is a narrator describing all the details of the pictures or scenes.

• If your student is quite young, use books that contain touch and feel material.

• The use of markers may be easier to use and easier to see than pencil crayons. If your student is young and that the main goal of an activity is to colour a shape, enlarge the lines of the shape, either manually with a marker or by using the photocopier's enlarging feature.

• During lunch time, it might be easier for your student to be able to use a food tray so it his/her food can be easily displayed in a pattern that makes it easier to locate the several items on it.

As you can see, some details might seem unsignificant to someone who is not visually impaired but believe me when I say that these simples adaptations make a world of a difference for your visually impaired student.