Welcome to the #Outreaching Blog!

Classroom teachers may have many questions about having a student with a visual impairment in their classrooms. If you're looking for a resource to help guide teachers who have a student with a visual impairment in their class, a new resource has noe become availbale. The online course was developed by Dr. Tina Herzberg and Dr. Penny Rosenblum is available for classroom teache ...

In BC, we are lucky to be surrounded by a rich abundance of nature that provides many opportunities for scientific exploration. Students with visual impairments can flourish in science curriculum when it is designed with accessibility and meaningfulness in mind. Students had an opportunity to take advantage of this direct access to the natural environment when they attended th ...

Do you have a student working towards independent access to print? One option for on-the-go access to print is using a mobile app. While there are many apps out there that perform OCR (optical character recognition) to convert images to text, here are several that have been designed specifically for individuals with visual impairments. These apps can be used on their own, or in ...

We're very excited to introduce a new title now available in print/braille from the PRCVI Library. "What a Wonderful World!" is written and illustrated by Kelsey, a grade two student who reads and writes in braille (and a great competitor at the Braille Challenge each year!).   Kelsey and her family self-published a book of Kelsey's writing and drawings to raise funds for Blin ...

Eye appointments can be a busy and stressful event for both parents and children. With so much going on—doctors who may be new, other medical staff, medical tests, an unfamiliar environment, and possibly a busy schedule with multiple appointments—it can be very helpful, not to mention more efficient, to come fully prepared for what to expect. Teachers of students with visual im ...

More and more devices have been incorporating accessibility features throughout the past decade. First the Mac, then iOS devices, then Android devices, and finally Windows incorporated screen reader and magnification features. Windows made major updates to Narrator, its built-in screen reader, with the release of Windows 8 and Windows 10. And with the latest update to Windows 1 ...

The PRCVI outreach team is celebrating White Cane Week out in the Kootenays! White Cane Week is a national awareness campaign held in the first full week of February each year intended to raise awareness around the issues facing adults with vision loss in Canada. Promoted each year by the Canadian Council of the Blind with events across the country, White Cane Week is an oppo ...

On Wednesday, January 16th the team from the Provincial Outreach Program for Students with Deafblindness (POPDB) came for a morning of meetings and a tour of the PRCVI collection. Since PRCVI and POPDB follow the same Ministry of Education qualification criteria for visual impairment, all students registered with POPDB are eligible for registration with PRCVI. The PRCVI outreac ...

Friday, January 4, was the birthday of Louis Braille and also World Braille Day. This was the first year that World Braille Day was recognized by the United Nations. The #WorldBrailleDay tag was celebrated across social media such as Twitter, with stories about how people around the world use braille and how companies are incorporating braille into products. "Almost two cent ...

Introducing the Next Generation 3D Cube Lightbox! Take this simple garden decoration/accessory and turn it into an easily adjustable lightbox for students with complex developmental profiles including visual impairment. Unlike a traditional lightbox, this cube has 5 illuminated surfaces. There are 15 colour options and four effect modes (flash, strobe, fade, and smooth) that ar ...