Resources

Much of our research work results in research reports and research articles. These can be found within the relevant research section. Some of our work also includes outputs which are more specifically guidelines and resources for different stakeholders:

Useful resources are:

• Early Childhood development and vision impairment training pack: Improving play and communications in home and early years settings. The ECD/VI Training Pack is intended to be used primarily by frontline health workers, specialist teachers and community development workers who support families with young children who have primarily a diagnosis of vision impairment.
• Improving access to work experiences for young people with a vision impairment. A resource to help local authorities supporting their students in undertaking work placements. 
• Whole School SEND: Supporting students with vision impairment. This resource page has been developed to accompany the Whole School SEND introductory video to vision impairment.
• Braille and Moon fonts. A site with links to free downloads of fonts.
• Online resources and guidance for young people with vision impairment going to university which draws upon our research evidence from the Longitudinal Transitions Study. 
• Steps to Independence This online resource presents key issues and recommendations for those involved in teaching mobility and independence to vision impaired children. The content authors were Sue Pavey, Graeme Douglas, Mike McLinden, and Steve McCall of the Visual Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR) at the University of Birmingham. The DfES, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, OPSIS and RNIB jointly funded this research. 
• Supporting visiting teaching services to best measure the outcomes of their work (working with Brent local authority)
• Thomas Pocklington funded guidelines on how to measure the effectiveness of services for people with sight loss (PDF). The report sets out some important information on outcome measures used when evaluating services for vision impaired people. The guide has been written for Professionals who want to evaluate the services they provide; Researchers who are evaluating services and interventions and Commissioners of research or services who are assessing the impact of their commissioned work
• Tough Talks. A guide for parents in talking to their child about their vision impairment. The resource draws upon evidence from the Longitudinal Transitions Study.

Touch Typing Tutor

Touch Typing Tutor is a software programme which was first designed in the 1990s to assist teaching touch typing skills to visually impaired children. A short description of it is given below. Still popular, it is now available as freeware http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/173/

The programme was specially designed to meet the needs of visually impaired people. For example, it provides the means to set up different colours, dimensions and fonts for the exercise text displayed, and has speech capability. These features make it possible for Touch Typing Tutor to be operated independently by the child. This program is easy to use, with a full set of touch typing exercises supplied. Additional exercises can easily be created using any text editor which is capable of writing plain ASCII files (e.g. the Windows 'Notepad'), and organised into lessons.