Helping blind pupils back to school

In the Malaga province, there are 329 blind or visually impaired school pupils that are facing the beginning of a new school year.

With the help of ONCE, the charity for the blind, and the Junta de Andalucia, returning to school won’t be quite as difficult this year. ONCE currently helps 1,733 students in all of Andalusia, 329 of which are in the Malaga province.

There are specific educational care teams and teachers, both supplied by ONCE and the regional government, specialised in visual disability, who go to schools where blind or low-vision students require support. They also train educational teams in matters of visual impairment, advise teachers and intervene directly with students in aspects related to their disability. 

31 professionals attend 329 visually impaired pupils

There are currently more than 400 of these professionals distributed throughout the autonomous communities of Spain. In the province of Malaga there are 31 who attend pupils.

In addition to supporting teaching staff, specific educational attention teams of ONCE are made up of psychologists, social workers, rehabilitation experts, tiflotechnology and braille trainers (teachers of how to use technology for the blind), and mediators for deaf and blind students. These teams carry out essential work for both students and their families.

One of the key areas where help is needed is in the field of education is in support for curricular areas of special difficulty. Subjects that, due to the difficulty involved in accessing their contents, must be addressed in a specific way. Among these subjects, language learning stands out the most, in which everything needs to be verbalised for the pupil.