2023 General Meeting – Ascoli Piceno, Italy

May 9th to 11th were 2023 dates for ENVITER 2023 annual meeting, this in year in the beautiful city of Ascoli Piceno, Italy.

With 3 full days dedicated to following your network goals, we had a full program that included our usual Conference, on Wednesday, this time under the theme “Innovation in Education and Rehabilitation for Visually Impaired People”, during which we had the following presentations:

1. Psyvis Impact Study: The impact of visual impairment and comorbid mental disorders on functioning in essential life domains. A systematic review and Delphi study, by Marjolein LA Onnink, Lisanne BA Teunissen, Peter FJ Verstraten and Ruth MA van Nispen, Hilde PA van der Aa (Robert Coppes Foundation, Vught, The Netherlands, Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit, Ophthalmology and the Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
2. Guidelines to support the creation of accessible videos to visually impaired children and their families, by V.Baiardi, S.Trentin, M.E. Reffo and E. Mercuriali (Robert Hollman Fondation, Italy)
3. Rehabilitative educational project for visually impaired youth with psychiatric, neurobiological and behavioral disorders, by Francesca Alessio-Vernì, Anna Calacione, Denise A. Ciccia and Giorgia Valenti (Istituto Rittmeyer, Italy)
4. Bringing Solutions and stakeholders together, by Prof. Priv. Doz. Mag. Dr. Elmar Wilhelm M. Fürst and Stefanie Chwalko, (Hilfsgemeinschaft der Blinden und Sehschwachen Österreich, Austria)
5. Blind people’s use of AI technology (BlindTech), by Birgit Christensen, Rikke Fogh Jørgensen (IBOS, Denmark)
6. Experimental taking care model: a machinery system in favour of families with visually impaired children, by Chiara Mastantyono (Unione Italiana dei Ciechi e degli Ipovedenti, Italy)
7. Summary of Innovations in Education at Royal Dutch Visio, by Evert Rasing (Royal Dutch Visio, The Netherlands)
8. New device in O&M- Bubble cane for beginners, by Agnes Somorjai (School for the Blind Budapest, Hungary)

During Wednesday afternoon, our attention was all on the results for the Erasmus+ T4VIS-In3D project: “Trainers for Visually Impaired Students Introduce 3D Printing”. This presentation was focused on:

• Creating tactile teaching material with 3D printers:
  • Advantages of 3D printing in comparison to traditional techniques
  • Prerequisites
  • Minimum requirements and anticipated costs
  • Further applications for 3D printing in organisations for the visullly impaired
• Developed curricula and associated teaching materials:
  • Curriculum 1: “Creating tactile teaching materials with 3D printer. Introduction into FDM and SLA technology
  • Curriculum 2: “Introducing visully impaired students into FDM 3D printing technology”

You can download the presented material using this link: https://www.t4vis-in3d.net/Presentation/ENVITER_3DPrint_Workshop_Presentations.zip. For more information on this project, please visit https://www.t4vis-in3d.net/ .

This Multiplier Event ended with the Workshop “Creating tactile maps with FDM 3D printers”, where participants learn about the required software, how to use TouchMapper, prepare data files for FDM printer/slicing, preparing the printer and starting the print job, also with the chance to check a 3D printer on the spot, during all these steps.