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Parent News
December 2001
Editorial
The Christmas and holiday season has arrived once again, and I’m sure we are all looking forward to a few weeks of rest and relaxation away from school activities. This issue of Parent News contains some information about events over the holiday period, as well as some fun and useful services accessible via e-mail.
Also in this newsletter are articles about how you can lobby the Education Department on issues of service provision to children who are blind, and news about the newly-formed group for Victorian Parents of Children who are vision-impaired. As always, I am seeking contributions from families for this newsletter. I welcome contributions sent to me, or I am happy to discuss ideas with families over the telephone or via e-mail. Thank you to everyone who has contacted me about Parent News this year, or who has sent items to be included in the newsletter. On behalf of everyone at Blind Citizens Australia, I would like to extend the very best wishes for a joyous and meaningful Christmas season and a restful holiday.
Helen Freris
Melbourne Theatre Company Season 2002
The following are the dates and performances with audio description for the 2002 season.
Bombshells by Joanna Murry-Smith
January 19
Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams
18 and 23 February
Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall
18 and 23 March
Life X 3 by Yasmina Reza
8 and 13 April
True West by Sam Shepard
20 and 25 MaY
Proof by David Auburn
17 and 22 June
The Recruit by Tony McNamara
22 and 27July
Soulmates by David Williamson
12 and 17 August
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn
9 and 14 September
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
30 September and 5 October
Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon
30 November and 2nd December.
The Monday performances start at 6.30pm and the Saturday performances at 4pm with the exception of the 5 October which starts at 1pm.
Vision impaired patrons, with a companion, can go on stage 1 hour prior to a performance to familiarise themselves with the stage setting and on occasions meet the cast.
(Source: Melbourne Theatre Company)
RVIB Christmas Sale
From 12 November to 21 December, RVIB VisEquip is holding a Christmas sale with 20% off games including board games, puzzles, jigsaws, tactile games, playing cards etc. You'll find VisEquip at 201 High Street, Prahran.
(Source: The Bulletin: SVRC, 18, 2001)
'City Limits' Camp for Secondary School Students
Monday 7 to Friday 11 January 2002
This one-week program will combine Orientation & Mobility sessions in the Melbourne Central Business District. The focus will be on gaining a broad understanding of what it is like to travel in a busy city area, how the city is set out, and using major landmarks. This is a chance to share learning experiences and challenges with others with a vision impairment. During the evenings participants will have the opportunity to visit some of those places discovered on the day sessions.
Apply by Monday 14th December 2001.
(Source: The Bulletin, SVRC, 18 2001)
"Better Services, Better Outcomes in Victorian Public Schools?
By Helen Freris
Recently, I wrote to all of you promoting a series of consultation and feedback forums run by the Department of Education Employment and Training (DEET). The subject of the forums was the current review of special education services for children with disabilities and impairments which DEET is conducting. Parents were encouraged to either attend the forums, obtain the document and individually submit their comments, or to contact me with their concerns regarding educational provisions for their children. Thank you to the parents who have contacted me and shared their experiences.
These anecdotes have been most useful in my preparation of a submission responding to the review document for Blind Citizens Australia. For your information the key points of our submission are:
Anyone interested in reading a copy of BCA’s submission to DEET is welcome to contact our office and request a copy to be sent to you. Please also feel free to share your experiences of negotiating the education system with other families, via this newsletter. We can then make it a helpful resource for communication and information-sharing by families. You can either send us contributions, or make contact with us using the contact details for BCA at the front of this newsletter.
Another way of expressing your views about support services for children who are blind or vision-impaired is to directly approach those with responsibility for funding services. For example, you may have concerns about the provision of timely braille material to your child’s school. We are always interested in hearing of these concerns, and so is your local member of State Parliament. The State Government funds library services, and needs to know of the impact of their funding policies. Likewise, service providers need to account for their performance under their funding contracts. Members of Parliament are more likely to become familiar with the concerns of families of children who are blind or vision-impaired by continuous exposure to them, from a variety of families. You might like to write to the newsletter, telling readers how you have gone.
Victorian Association of Parents of Children with a Vision Impairment (VAPVI)
Editor’s Note: Here is an update on the activities of this group, whose first meeting was promoted in the last issue of Parent News. They are always welcoming of new members, so please get in touch with them if you are interested in becoming involved.
Information Newsletter.
1-11-2001
Victorian parents have made a further step in establishing a support group for parents of children with a vision impairment. On the 25th of October 2001 at a meeting held at the RVIB Burwood, 10 Parents nominated for positions on the committee of the Victorian Association of Parents of Children with a Vision Impairment (VAPVI).
On the 10th July 2001 Quantum Technology and the RVIB organised an information evening at RVIB in Burwood with Susan La Venture, Executive Director of the National Association for Parents of Children with Vision Impairments (NAPVI) USA. Susan was sponsored by Quantum Technology to visit Australia. Susan spoke about the growth and influence of her group, which is now highly recognised at community and government levels. Susan was very generous with her offer to help establish any such groups in Australia. This meeting inspired a group of parents to pursue the establishment of a much needed Victorian support group for the parents of children with vision impairment.
The initial objective of the group was to contact as many parents as possible, and make them aware of the proposed support group and nomination evening to form the first committee. The parent group received help from organisations such as the RVIB, BCA, and the SVRC to name some. Messages of encouragement and support have also been strong from parents throughout Victoria.
At the committee nomination and information evening held on the 25th October 2001, speakers discussed the objectives of the support group, and some parents shared personal stories regarding their vision impaired child. Question time was active and a sense of enthusiasm was noticeable. An understanding of the issues surrounding vision impairment needs were felt by everyone.
The vision of the support group is to help parents by providing information, developing a membership referral base of parents and organisations, improving education standards, and actively assisting service providers. The group will be able to support families early in diagnosis, and be a voice throughout the educational life of the child.
VAPVI would like to thank everyone that has helped spread the news of their existence, and distributed the questionnaire data-form, which enables the group to contact parents. VAPVI have been receiving a steady stream of completed questionnaires, and will continue to build their membership base.
VAPVI welcome any inquiries regarding their membership or continuing developments. If anyone would like to become registered on their data-base please send your contact details to the address below.
All inquires can be made to:
Michael & Ingrid Siles
Ph 03 9849 0900
Email: silesmi@bigpond.com
PO Box 638, Box Hill, Victoria, 3128.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT.
* GAPS IN THE SYSTEM.
By Tamara Fletcher
(Source: E-Access Bulletin, issue 23 November 2001. The email newsletter on technology issues for people with visual impairment and blindness.)
Although there are around 22,000 visually impaired children in the UK, there is little educational technology or software for such children available in mainstream schools. This problem is compounded by a shortage of advice for parents on how to make do without such aids.
Under section two of the new Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 ( www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2001/20010010.htm),
Local authorities "must arrange for the parent of any child in their area with special educational needs to be provided with advice and information . . .relating to those needs".
According to Chris Stevens, special needs manager for the Government Educational Technology Agency Becta
(www.becta.org.uk), technology for pre-school children in particular receives too little attention.
"Becta has done a lot of work on raising awareness of local education authorities and software developers", Stevens says. "Awareness is growing but there is still a concern among technology providers that building in accessibility means it will cost more money," says Stevens.
Olga Miller, Children's Policy Officer at the RNIB, is also concerned. "Currently there is no clear route for parents to follow for children to get access to technology at home. This continues to be a massive area of need. With training, parents could do a lot to encourage their children to be independent but provision is very poor, with no real central help."
Wendy Sainsbury, national family support officer at 'LOOK' (www.look.graphicbox.co.uk), a support organisation for families with visually impaired children, supports this view.
Although there are a few organisations which distribute grants, such as Electronic Aids for the Blind (www.eabnet.org.uk) and the National Blind Children's Society (www.nbcs.org.uk), she says: "On the whole children don't have the access that they should have.
Often where there is provision, children have to share equipment. Funding for home access is the biggest problem of all - the situation is a complete nightmare as there are not many places families can get grants."
Provision of access technology in schools is similarly problematic. Miller says there is extremely patchy coverage of access technology caused by fragmentation of local education authority funding for the visually impaired, whereby each LEA's support services are structured differently.
This problem is aggravated, Miller says, by the fact that many schools are tied into LEA managed service provider agreements which do not offer enough flexibility to allow provision of access equipment. For example under the agreements only standard-sized computer screens may be available, so schools would find it hard to request larger screens for visually impaired children.
Lesley Waddell, senior ICT Development Officer at the RNIB, agrees: "The service provider comes in and installs all the basic hardware but access technology is never part of this bundle. It is the responsibility of the individual school to determine what they need which is sometimes difficult if people are not aware of the different options available to them."
The Department for Education and Science has published the white paper 'Schools - achieving success'
(www.dfes.gov.uk/achievingsuccess) which promises a restructuring of the LEA and school funding systems from 2003-04. Central to this will be a reform of education 'standard spending assessments', which will allow for individual LEAs and schools to decide what to spend on particular areas of the service.
At present if a child has a special educational needs statement issued by an LEA, which is required by law for all who need one, the authority has a responsibility to cater for the individual needs of that child. However this is a catch-22 situation which means in practice that the quality of the provision depends on quality of the statement. "There are so many children with woolly statements not worth the paper they're written on and then there are very good ones that the LEAs are not providing for," Sainsbury says.
Furthermore, although most registered blind children have statements, those with partial sight often do not. Nystagmus sufferers are most often without statements as the severity of the eye condition can vary from day to day.
The picture is not all bleak, however, and some local authorities offer quite good provision and support.
North Yorkshire County Council has a Sensory and Physical Support Service and a visual impairment support team (www.northyorks.gov.uk/pps/sensory/special.shtm).
There is a toy and equipment lending library for young children, and if the equipment looks like it has long-term benefits the service will help parents to access funding for their own equipment. Awareness training days for teachers and other professionals are also offered.
"The awareness days are very successful, with lots of positive feedback," says Janet Pentlow, the vision team's Advisory Support Teacher. "We are about to embark on six training days across the county for early education providers as an introduction to hearing, visual and physical impairment."
One place where schools and education authorities can locate and exchange ideas and resources for the education of children with visual impairment is the 'inclusion' area of the National Grid for Learning
(www.ngfl.gov.uk), the Becta-run educational web portal
Becta has also recently established a 'VI forum' email discussion list whereby educational practitioners can discuss issues relating to the teaching of students with visual impairments (to subscribe email majordomo@ngfl.gov.uk, leaving the subject blank, with 'subscribe vi-forum' in the message body).
Through national moves like these it is to be hoped that, as more schools and education authorities do begin to improve their practices towards teaching visually impaired children, their experiences and resources can be shared by all.
Through the Maze
(October 2001)
The latest edition of 'Through the Maze: A Guide to Benefits and Services for Families of Children with a Disability' has recently become available. Produced by the Association for Children with a Disability, this booklet includes contact information for case management, legal issues, recreation, transport, respite care and much more. If you would like a copy of this document, contact the Association on 9500 1232 or
(Source: The Bulletin, SVRC, 18, 2001)
Disability Info Line
Disability Information Victoria is operated by Vision Australia Foundation in partnership with the Association for Children with a Disability and Sausage Business Solutions, and funded by the Department of Human Services. It includes loads of information including Facts on Disability, Terms and Acronyms, Services, News and Events, Frequently Asked Questions, Hints and Tips, Financial Assistance etc. You can find this information on the website at www.disabilityinfo.org.au or by calling 1300 650 865.
(Source: The Bulletin, SVRC. 19, 2001)
A FEW NET-GOODIES
(Editor’s note: The following information was copied from the Braille-Note discussion list, an e-mail list of Pulse-Data International. It offers useful research ideas which can be accessed purely by e-mail. Note that many of the services listed are particularly relevant to the United States.)
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Here are some other interesting things you can do by e-mail. (Some of them are accessible only by e-mail!)
Get instant answers and information on almost 100 topics by e-mail. Dictionary, encyclopedia, airfares, almanac, airports, currency conversion, distance between two points, etc: Send a blank e-mail message to: topics@halibot.com
An "anon server" provides a front for sending mail messages and posting to Usenet newsgroups anonymously, should the need ever arise. To get instructions send e-mail to remailer@gacracker.org with a subject: remailer-help
Have a math question? Dr. Math answers questions from K-12 students and their teachers about Mathematics. Write to dr.math@forum.swarthmore.edu
Send your earth-shattering questions to
ask-a-geologist@octopus.wr.usgs.gov and a US Geological Service scientist will try to help.
Send your computer hardware or software support questions to helpdesk@ask-a-tech.org and this non-profit organisation will try to answer your question.
Search the King James version of the Bible. Examples below can be sent to an Agora server. Use "+" to specify multiple words; prefix proper names with "%23"; add "&PHRASE=ON" to find a phrase.
Send estragon.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/KJV?title=&word=angel+%23Mary
send estragon.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/KJV?title=&word=fig+tree&PHRASE=ON
To access the National Cancer Institute's database, send e-mail to cancernet@icicb.nci.nih.gov with "help" or "spanish" in the message body.
The following are all autoresponder addresses that you can use to test if your e-mail is working. You send a blank message to the address shown and in a few minutes an autoresponse is received.
echo@seattlelab.com test-courrier@sogi.com (in French)
echo@telcomplus.net test@alphanet.ch
echo@tu-berlin.de test@mega.bw
internet@gurus.com test@netsydney.com
The International E-mail accessibility FAQ is retrievable by e-mail. Send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu and enter only this line in the BODY of the note:
send usenet/news.answers/mail/country-codes
Web site: www.nsrc.org/oclb
Stumped by those 2-letter country codes in Internet addresses?
Send e-mail to address-codes@GetResponse.com for an explanation.
You can get foreign exchange rates for the U.S. dollar and other currencies by sending this URL to an Agora or www4mail server: cnnfn.com/markets/currencies.html
Need to get a message to someone in Britain who doesn't have e-mail? Send it to PaperMail! For full details on this fee-based service, send e-mail to info@papermail.win-uk.net
For a guide to finding someone's e-mail addresses. Send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu and enter only this line in the BODY of the note: send usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses
Get tons of info on movies, actors, and directors. Send e-mail to movie@imdb.com with HELP in the subject line.
To learn the history of the Internet from 1950 to 1998, send blank e-mail to timeline@hobbes.mitre.org
Take a virtual tour of the Internet - hop on The Internet TourBus! You'll receive a short mailing twice a week highlighting fun and interesting sites on the Internet. It's absolutely free, and you can join 80,000 others by sending SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Firstname Lastname in the BODY of a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM.
Get BABEL, a glossary of computer abbreviations and acronyms. Use a web-to-mail server to retrieve this file.
www.geocities.com/ikind_babel/babel/babel.html [214K]
Send a blank e-mail message to net@usa.healthnet.org to receive a FAQ which lists locations for medical information that can be accessed by e-mail methods.
The wordserver at wsmith@wordsmith.org will serve up
A.Word.A.Day, Dictionary by Mail, Thesaurus by Mail, Acronym by Mail and Anagram by Mail. Send blank e-mail for the help file.
Merriam-Webster dictionary offers the word of the day -- To subscribe, send mail to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.WEBSTER.M-W.COM with the
Command SUBSCRIBE MW-WOD [your name].
To find out how a number sequence continues (such as 2 3 5 7 11 ..., the prime numbers), send e-mail to sequences@research.att.com with the following in the message body: lookup 2 3 5 7 11. For help on this service, send e-mail with a body of "help" to the same address.
You can play games via the PBeM Server, for info, send e-mail to
pbmserv@gamerz.net with Subject: help tutorial
...is a weekly featuring announcements of new and interesting resources on the Internet. To subscribe, send e-mail to listserv@cs.wisc.edu with "Subscribe scout-report Your Name" in the body.
A system for distributing statistical software, datasets, and information by electronic mail, FTP, and WWW. To get the index, send e-mail to statlib@lib.stat.cmu.edu with the one line message "send index".
To get a stock market quote, send this line to an Agora server: finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=xxxx where xxxx is the stock market symbol.
You can track your UPS packages now thru e-mail. Send an e-mail to totaltrack@ups.com and in the subject or the body place the complete tracking number.
A cooperative, anonymous and humorous exchange of questions and answers. Send e-mail to oracle@cs.indiana.edu for more information.
F-Prot, one of the top PC virus scanners can be requested by e-mail. To get the current version (uuencoded) send e-mail to f-prot-update@complex.is with this message body: send-as: uue
WEBSTER DICTIONARY LOOKUP
To retrieve the definition of a word, send this line to an Agora type server: send http://www.britannica.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=whatever
For more details on using web search engines by e-mail use a web-to-mail server to get this file send ftp://ftp.expita.com/wsintro.faq
Copyright (c) 1999-2001, Gerald E. Boyd
All rights reserved. Permission is granted to duplicate and distribute copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.