Our General Meeting, hosted by our member BFW Halle (Germany), is coming very soon. Only a few more days to have our network gathered for 3 working days, from April 15th to 18th.

As usual, the second day will be Conference Day, and this year the theme is Moving and Being Moved Towards Social Inclusion”

Are you coming?

Once in every four years a European Conference in the field of people with visual impairments is organized by the International Council for Education and Rehabilitation of People with Visual Impairment, Europe Region (ICEVI-Europe), in cooperation with a host committee and local partners. 

ICEVI-Europe in cooperation with ENVITER member Robert Hollman Foundation proudly announce the milestone tenth European Conference in 2025. The 10th ICEVI-European Conference will be held from May 15 to May 17, 2025 at the Town Hall and University of Padova in Italy, thanks to the hospitality and collaboration of the Municipality of Padova and the University of Padova.

Join to actively take part in the exchange of knowledge and expertise and sharing of best practices within a network of people and institutions promoting the inclusion of people with visual impairment, as we explore this year’s theme: “Supporting children and young adults with visual impairment: What can we do? What can be done?”

The Conference, which will bring together hundreds of professionals from all over Europe, will focus on how support, using a multidisciplinary approach, can foster a better quality of life for children and young adults with visual impairment.  Presentations will be an opportunity to share experiences on four important areas of interest: individual development and assessment; education and learning; habilitation and rehabilitation; access, participation, engagement in society.  The final goal of the conference is the presentation of a Key Principles document provided to professionals who wish to offer a global approach which will support their work with children and young adults with visual impairment and their families.

For further information, you can access the Save the Date Flyer about this event and please regularly visit the official conference website: https://icevieurope2025-hollman.it/ which is now live and the website of ICEVI-Europe at www.icevi-europe.org

Group photo from this visit

We had a great meeting, visiting our recent member from Ireland, ChildVision.  According to the hosts, they were delighted to receive the ENVITER President and Co-ordinator, Ms Elena Weber and Ms Agnes Somorjai for a two-day visit.

ChildVision joined ENVITER last year and is looking forward to continuing the co-operation with other European partners.

Photo above shows, from left to right:

  • Katharine Howe, Reading Services Manager, ChildVision
  • Elena Weber, ENVITER president
  • Geraldine Neill, Vision Services Development Manager, ChildVision
  • Agnes Somorjai, ENVITER co-ordinator
  • Ilka Stäglin, Director of Education, ChildVision

General Meeting Logo

We are pleased to announce our 2024 annual Conference, hosted by the BFW Halle in Germany, on Wednesday 17th April 2024.

The purpose of our Annual Conference is to create an opportunity for professionals to share their theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of vision impairment, focusing especially on innovative methodologies, practices and tools.

We are inviting proposals for paper presentations in the following thematic area:

Moving and Being Moved Towards Social Inclusion”

Proposal ideas that extend beyond these thematic area will be considered by the Board of ENVITER.

Abstracts:

  • Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 25th March 2024 (to be sent to:  coordinator@enviter.eu )
  • Full papers must be presented in English.
  • These papers will be considered for publication on our website.
  • The presentation of the papers should be 20-30 minutes (including questions)

We also offer the opportunity for participation to people as presenters, speakers or as members of the audience who are not from ENVITER member organisations, so please inform your colleagues from the VI field about our conference.

We hope you will be able to join us.

For more information, please contact us.

Photo by Pete Linforth from Pixabay.

This year started for our Board with a physical meeting in Zagreb, Croatia, hosted by our Vinko Bek Center for Education member.

Between many subjects and decisions, especially concerning this year activities and events, it was the perfect opportunity to sign the Memorandum of Agreement between ENVITER and HIPEN (Hearing Impairment Professionals European Network).

Another ENVITER Webinar, this time about “Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Visual Impairment” was held through Zoom on November 28th.

The presentation by Laura Latour, from our IRSAM (France) member, was about her PhD research studies, which started with two general observations:

  • The high prevalence of ASD in Blind and Severely Visually impaired children: several studies estimate occurrence up to 30-50%…
  • Complexity of the ASD Diagnosis: overlapping of clinical signs + lack of tests adapted to these children.

You can access this presentation here.

The recording of this Webinar is available at ENVITER’s Youtube channel.

 

Dear CVI professional,

 

We would like to know about your possible interest in establishing an ICEVI-Europe professional interest group on Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). Professional Interest Groups were established with the purpose of bringing together teachers, academics and professionals who work in the same specific field in order to exchange knowledge and experiences about the education and re/habilitation of people with visual impairments.

With this questionnaire we would like to map the organisations and persons who are supporting children and young adults with cerebral visual impairment (CVI) and to determine interest in setting up such a professional interest group.

We would appreciate if you could share this questionnaire that takes no longer than 10 minutes, with any other professionals who may also be interested in such a professional interest group.

Please go to: https://forms.office.com/e/Ae04ZMBqqZ to fill in the questionnaire.

It would be great if you could reply before 20 November 2023.

Many thanks in advance.

 

Marieke Steendam, Royal Dutch Visio

John Ravenscroft, University of Edinburgh

Frank Laemers, University of Education Heidelberg

Aukje Snijders, Royal Dutch Visio

Our President, Mrs. Elena Weber, and another of our Board Members, Mr. Philippe Belseus, are in Helsinki representing us and also our peer Network, HIPEN, in the EASPD (European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities) International Conference ‘Enabling Social Innovation: Concepts, frameworks & organisational change’ and General Assembly.
For more information about this event, visit https://www.easpdconference.eu/.

Another ENVITER Webinar, hosted by VYV3 PDL – Monteclair Institute, was held on October 16th, with the aim of presenting the EARLY project results.

EARLY project was born from ENVITER exchanges, based on a topic submitted by MONTECLAIR Institute (Angers-France), and coming from the same purposes: children, and young adults with blindness often lack of autonomy in different areas.

Monteclair proposed to work together to question our practices in early intervention services and support of families with the aim to develop good practices in this field. An Erasmus + project Exchange of practices is born in 2020 between France (Monteclair and CRDV), Italy (Rittmeyer, Ascoli and Istituto dei Sordi), Austria (Contrast), Bulgaria (NRCB) and Croatia (Vinko Bek). During 2 years, 3 mobilities of professionals were developed for the exchange of practices and put forward the good practices for the support of very young children.

This webinar detailed the content of the project and outcomes realized, with intervention by Catherine THIBAULT and Philippe BELSEUR (VYV3 PDL – Monteclair Institute).

You can find the results of this project here:

Please visit our  ENVITER Youtube channel, following this link, if you wish to see the recording of this webinar.

This year, Viena (Austria) was the host city of ENVITER’s annual Blue Sky Meeting (BSM).

On September 28th and 29th, our members met at the Hilfsgemeinschaft to brainstorm about ideas for project proposals and develop constructive workshops.

These annual BSM are developed with the financial support of the network itself, sponsoring the involvement of a person per member and this way promoting the opportunity to meet together and to take part in the growth of ENVITER, by encouraging work on new project topics and proposals for submission for funding.

During the 2 work days, we had the opportunity to participate in debates, presentations, project workshops and also a visit to our new member, the Bundes-Blindenerziehungsinstitut.

During the presentations, Laura Latour, from our member IRSAM, presented her work about Autism Spectrum Disorder And  Visual Impairment. You will be able to find her presentation here and we hope that, soon, we can have a webinar about it, so this subject can reach professionals working in our members organizations and others.

For participants that could also stay until Saturday, it was possible to engage in a very special visit to one of the most iconic places, in Vienna: St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

ENVITER – European Network for Vision Impairment Training Education & Research
© 2025 – All rights reserved – Website developed by LSLX

ENVITER – European Network for Vision Impairment Training Education & Research
© 2025 – All rights reserved

Website developed by LSLX