We had a wonderful meeting! After 2,5 years and the serious pandemic times, we had our first General Meeting in person in Angers on 12 to 14 April.

From 14 different European countries,  17 member organisations could attend the meeting with 32 participants. The meeting was organised by the Institute Montéclair of VYV 3 Pays De la Loire.

Our current president and former president, during the celebration of the 20th anniversary

Beyond our general meeting, this occasion was very special, because our network celebrated its 20th anniversary. Thanks to our former president Mr. Francis Guiteau, who is the current deputy mayor in Angers, the members were invited for an official ceremony to the Hotel de Ville d’Angers.

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

This year the main topic was “Positive side effects of covid on inclusion of VI people” – Good Practices, Opportunities, Future Plans, Takeaways”

We had 6 presentations:

  1. Mijke Hartendorp: The impact of the Covid-19 measures on the psychosocial well-being of persons with blindness, low vision and deafblindness: Lessons learnt and solutions (Saxion Hogeschool and Visio, The Netherlands)
  2. Ramona Ionela Mureşan and Elisabeta Pintilie: Tools and Activities for Social Inclusion Examples of Good Practice in the Teaching of Visually Impaired Students in the Context of Covid (Highschool for the Visually Impaired Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
  3. Juergen Huellen: At the crossroads between progress in digitisation and methodological feasibility (BFW Dueren Germany)
  4. Dorthe Marie Degn: Positive side effects of covid on inclusion of VI people (IBOS, Denmark)
  5. Margherita Anselmi: Positive sides of covid situation for people with visual impairment (UICI Ascoli Piceno Italy)
  6. Agnes Somorjai: Bread online – good practices in vocational training during distance learning (School for the Blind Budapest, Hungary)
During the Conference, one of our members presenting their experience

The last day was dedicated to projects and future collaborations. We talked about the new ways of funding, the EU accreditation process and about project proposals and also prepared the upcoming Blue Sky Meeting and the next Summer Course.

All the participants emphasized the importance of personal meetings. Beyond the professional work we had time for informal talks as well, and could really feel the dynamism and strength of our network.

Happy birthday ENVITER!

General Meeting Logo

Pleased to announce our 2022 annual Conference, hosted by vyv3 in Angers, France, on Wednesday 13th April 2022.

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:

“Positive side effects of COVID on inclusion of VI people: good practices, opportunities, future plans, takeaways”

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

Abstracts:

  • Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 10th March 2022
  • 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.

Visio CVI instrument logo

Increasing the quality of care, and the quality of life for people with Cortical Visual Impairement (CVI) is something professionals worldwide endeavour.

This webinar, presented by Femke van der Veer, from Visio (the Netherlands) on June 17th 2021, aimed to give its participants more insight into CVI and the implications on daily life as well as introducing Visio’s instrument “CVI in the Picture”.

 

Example of shoes with the device

On the 29th of April 2021, Markus Raffer, founder and CEO of Tec-Innovation, with the cooperation of Klaus Höckner from the our member Hilfsgemeinschaft, Austria, presented to our members the InnoMake, a warning system built into shoes, developed to make everyday life safer for visually impaired and blind people through intelligent obstacle detection.

On March 23rd 2021 we had the pleasure to have Juan Ruiz, presenting a webinar about echolocation for our members.

Juan Ruiz is a Perceptual Navigation Instructor and Flash Sonar Coach. Himself also a user, he teaches his students how to better perceive the space around them, using sound to get an acoustic read on their surroundings.

General Meeting logo blue

This year, on March 16th, our General Meeting was again done online.

Focusing on the usual subjects like the financial report of our Association and runing projects, we also had the announcement of our next board election, to be elected in October this year.

Hopefully, we started to prepare our next physical meeting: our General Meeting in Angers 2022, for the celebration of ENVITER‘s 20th Anniversary.

Photo by Pete Linforth from Pixabay.

ENVITER webinar logo

Hilde van der Aa, Marit van Buijsen and Lia van der Ham from the Robert Coppes Foundation, in The Netherland, presented on the 23 February 2021 an overview of mental illness in visually impaired adults, an introduction to a basic attitude in working with this target group and an elaboration on PTSD.

Photo by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

Photo of a blind man using a computer

During the afternoon of the 26thof January 2021 we developed another webinar, this time about “Distance Learning and Training for VIP: how are we doing it…”.

This was the perfect opportunity for our members to exchange some ideas, presenting the different areas they have and how are they coping with the “new” issues imposed by the distance learning for visually impaired people in this pandemic situation and home-office time.

To kick star this webinar/exchange, we had 3 presentations:

  • Vera Rapagão, from Fundação Raquel e Martin Sain, Portugal;
  • Petra Greiser, from BFW Halle, Germany;
  • Martina Smolčić, from the Vinko Bek Center for Education, Croatia.

This webinar was attended by 37 participants from our members, joining from countries like Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxemburg, and Portugal.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels.

European Solidarity Corps logo

For the first time, HIPEN and ENVITER members jointly organized a webinar (by Zoom), looking to practically introduce the European Solidarity Corps programme. The European Solidarity Corps is a European Commission programme funding projects to enable young adults from 18 to 30 of age to have experiences and make opportunities abroad.

All organizations throughout Europe can apply to be hosting or sending organisations, for the benefit of young people with sensory disabilities.

A concrete introduction of this programme and its added value for organisations and young people was presented on January 13th 2021 by Enrico Dolza from Turin (Italy).

Photo of a magnifying glass over braille

On the 14th of December 2020, for an audience of about 20 people from different European countries, ENVITER had its first ever Webinar, using Zoom.

The theme was “The role of a Visual Impairment professional in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) services”, presented by Monika Toth and Krisztina Katona, from Hungary.

If you are interested in this subject, you can take a look at the presentation or contact our Hungarian partner (School for the Blind, Budapest)

Photo by Eren Li from Pexels.

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