This year, ENVITER General Meeting took us to the beautiful city of Zagreb, Croatia.

During 3 working days, 38 participants from 11 different European countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, The Netherlands), representing 80% of our members, had time and opportunity to discuss about different aspects of our Network activities and to remind us all why we are here: to network, exchange knowledge, good practices and to look for opportunities to disseminate, research and training.

With a Conference day dedicate to the theme “Transformations and innovations in our organisations -The Times They Are a-Changin’”, we had, to an audience of 68 participants, 11 presentations and 2 workshops, provided by different organisations and professionals from diverse countries, according to the program below.

Presentations:

• Educating future professionals: necessity of knowledge, expertise and experience exchange – Sonja Alimovic, University of Zagreb, Department for visual impairments, Faculty of education and rehabilitation sciences, Croatia
• Self-determination of clients and teams – Lia Van der Ham, Robert Coppes Foundation, The Netherlands
• A project of research on CVI – Philippe Belseur and Catherine Thibault, VYV Care-Monteclair, France
• Learning or visual functioning problems among children in regular schools, Andrea Paulik, Mali Dom, Croatia
• Visual art and visual impairment – Tanja Parlov, Centre Vinko Bek, Croatia
• Home Care Premium – Elena Weber, Rittmeyer Institute, Italy
• Stepped Care Model – Ruben Koman, VISIO, The Netherlands
• Support for children with visual impairment in the Republic of Croatia: some examples for thinking – Anita Lukic, Centre Vinko Bek, Croatia
• Assistance dogs and their role in regard to blind and visually impaired children – Minja Orlić, Rehabilitation Centre Silver, Croatia
• Who has to change? – Agnes Somorjai, Budapest School for the Blind, Hungary
• Psychosocial rehabilitation and working methods at the adult department – Ana Petrinec and Emina Sisic-Andelic, Centre Vinko Bek, Croatia

Workshops:

• Feelif – Rebeka Žerovnik, Feelif, Slovenia
• Social-media workshop – Ruben Koman, VISIO, The Netherlands

This year, Copenhagen (Denmark) was the city that hosted ENVITER’s annual Blue Sky Meeting (BSM). On April 9th and 10th, 27 participants representing 18 of the network members gathered at IBOS (Instituttet for Blinde og Svagsynede – Institute for the Blind and Partially Sighted) 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.

Next year, in April, Trieste (Italy) will be the place to be if you wish to participate in ENVITER’s Blue Sky Meeting 2020!

Objective:
Nowadays, work places and even private environments can hardly be managed without displays and screens and the usage of the eyesight.

The integration of people with vision impairment into the labour market therefore is a special challenge. The ongoing digitalization complicates their inclusion. Otherwise, with Braille display and voice input/output technologies digitalization itself creates new opportunities to participate in the labour market.

The joint project focuses on technical procedures like image recognition and on methods like the collaborative development and updating of accessible learning content (inclusive OpenCorurseWare) and its accessible usage in vocational training practice.

Content:
The platform SlideWiki (https://slidewiki.org) , which has been established by Fraunhofer, is a collaborative learning platform based on OpenCourseWare (OCW) that follows similar ideas to those of Wikipedia. The basic software of SlideWiki will be adapted to the special needs of blind and visually impaired users. That implies for instance the intelligent information extraction from visual data. This way, descriptions of pictures may be (partly) automatically generated and provided to users with special needs. Furthermore, native software applications will be developed for common systems (Android, Apple iOS, Windows) and the connection to technical aids like screen reader and Braille display will be implemented and tested.
Making vocational learning content available via OCW to IT assistants and office management assistants is a main task of the BFW Halle. This practical usage will be completed after the accessible adaption of SlideWiki is finally done.

Project partners:
Berufsförderungswerk Halle (coordinator)
German Central Library for the Blind, Leipzig
German National Library of Science and Technology, Hannover
Research Centre L3S, Leibniz University Hannover
Fraunhofer IAIS, Schloss Birlinghoven Sankt Augustin

Funding period:
01 December 2017 – 30 November 2020
Funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) and the European Social Funds (ESF).

Contact details:
Berufsförderungswerk Halle (Saale) gGmbH
Dr. Ulf Gläser
Bugenhagenstr. 30
D-06110 Halle
Germany
Phone: +49 345 1334-116 or -117
Email: uglaeser@bfw-halle.org

Our Serbian partner is celebrating 100 years, in December! The School for Visually Impaired Pupils “Veljko Ramadanovic“ was established in 1917, in Biserta, Tunisia. In 1919, its location changed to Zemun, Belgrade, in Serbia. “Veljko Ramadanovic” is a school for students with visual impairment from all over Serbia.

To celebrate this important event with guests and friends, various activities will take place from December 11 to December 13, 2017: on December 11th, a Conference on the topic “Work with visually impaired and multiple disabled visually impaired children – new tendencies in work. Achievements and problems in work with these children” will be organized. On December 13th, a ceremony will be held in one of Belgrade’s beautiful theaters.

For more information on this celebration, please contact:
skolaveljkoramadanovic@yahoo.com