Welcome to the #Outreaching Blog!

 

#Outreaching is a blog about all things outreach from the Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments at PRCVI.

We use this space to keep our community updated on what we've been doing around the province and to post interesting news and features. Please feel free to post in the comments - we would love to hear from you.

For more information on PRCVI outreach services, please see our main outreach page or contact an Outreach Coordinator.

Here at PRCVI we love braille, and we love LEGO! We've blogged about accessible LEGO kits and using LEGO to support ECC instruction before. So we were excited about the opportunity to learn about the possibilities of LEGO Braille Bricks recently! On October 3, Monica from CNIB Frontier Accessibility and Marie and Marc from LEGO Braille Bricks came to PRCVI to deliver a worksho ...

0 comments Unified English Braille, Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies, Professional Development, Orientation and Mobility Skills, Independent Living Skills, Community Partners, Authentic Experiences, Recreation and Leisure Skills, Social Interaction Skills, Compensatory Skills, Sensory Efficiency Skills, Self-Determination Skills, English Language Arts, Languages

Have you ever heard of "region" (or "landmark") when navigating a website with a screen reader? If so, what are they, what do they do, and why are they important? These were some of the questions asked and answered when PRCVI did a group outreach visit near the end of the 2021-22 school year. Several TSVIs and visually impaired students came together to tackle some web navigat ...

0 comments Authentic Experiences, Recreation and Leisure Skills, Social Interaction Skills, Compensatory Skills, Classroom Visits, Access Technology Skills, Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies, Featured Outreach

On Friday, June 10, more than a hundred students with visual impairments and TSVIs, educational assistance, parents, siblings, and peers came out to participate in the Lower Mainland Sports Day for the first time in two years! The annual Sports Day, organized by local TSVIs, O&M specialists, and BC Blind Sports, with support provided by PRCVI, provides an accessible sports ...

0 comments Community Partners, Authentic Experiences, Recreation and Leisure Skills

The third Thursday in May is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). In keeping with the spirit of GAAD in centering the perspectives of users and critically engaging users as co-designers of more accessible and equitable futures, our Outreach Team at PRCVI hosted a virtual panel of recent blind and low vision K-12 graduates. Participants are currently navigating post-second ...

0 comments Community Partners, Career and Vocational Skills, Access Technology Skills, Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies

When the COVID-19 pandemic first arrived in early 2020, educators everywhere found themselves pivoting to providing remote and online learning. The outreach team at PRCVI was asked to provide outreach and collaboration with a couple of British Columbia TSVIs in delivering virtual braille games. The PRCVI outreach team has continued to deliver this group outreach opportunities f ...

0 comments Web Resources, Social Interaction Skills, Compensatory Skills, Self-Determination Skills

Learning to stay organized is a crucial skill for visually impaired students to learn, and that doesn’t change just because students may be using more digital technology these days! Students need to be able to organize handouts, readings, research, and assignments, and be able to quickly find information during classes and group work. The topic of efficiently organizing and fin ...

0 comments Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies, Access Technology Skills, Authentic Experiences, Compensatory Skills, Self-Determination Skills

Students with cerebral/cortical visual impairment (CVI) may have some unique sensory access requirements to literacy experiences. For the past several years, PRCVI has been maintaining a collection of literacy materials that meet the access needs of students with CVI. Books within the CVI literacy collection feature simple, high-contrast illustrations and text. The books have ...

0 comments Cortical Visual Impairment, Featured PRCVI Resources, English Language Arts

When designing literacy activities, it is so important that they be inclusive to all students. Many of you know that ARC-BC provides an online repository of accessible digital materials to students with print disabilities in British Columbia. But did you know about ARC-BC materials available in PowerPoint format? PowerPoint books are available on ARC-BC as either .pps or .ppsx ...

0 comments Featured PRCVI Resources, Authentic Experiences, English Language Arts

Are you and your students baffled by what to do when a braille device asks for computer braille input? (Or maybe you've wondered what the gibberish displayed when a braille device is not connected to anything means!) The PRCVI outreach team has created a guide for teachers on how to enter braille ASCII, otherwise known as "computer braille", into a braille device. We hope you ...

0 comments Access Technology Skills, Web Resources, Unified English Braille, Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies, Professional Development

A frequent request the outreach team receives here at PRCVI focuses on strategies for teaching students to use screen reading software such as JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver. We are always looking for games or activities to teach skills, rather than just memorizing a list of keyboard commands. At the recent closing ceremonies of the 2021 BC Regional Braille Challenge, which was held ...

0 comments Access Technology Skills, Web Resources, Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies, Authentic Experiences
Return to the top of the page