All of us at WVS are passionate about improving awareness of the challenges faced by people with a visual impairment. Part of this is supporting others to improve their knowledge and confidence around sight loss. As such we are excited to have recently launched our Visual Impairment Awareness Training. An hour long taster session delivered by a qualified vision rehabilitation specialist offers bespoke advice and exercises designed to give people more confidence around working with people with sight loss.

Having a better understanding of sight loss can help businesses and organisations ensure that they are serving their visually impaired customers more effectively. Attracting more visually impaired customers makes sense from a business perspective, disability spend in the UK is estimated at around £274bn annually. With the government’s aim of getting more disabled people into work, understanding people with sight loss will make organisations more confident in employing them.

Our training sessions are tailored to the audience, so whatever your organisation, we can accommodate your own circumstances. The session covers sight loss conditions and how they effect the person experiencing them. We use simulation specs to demonstrate a number of conditions, and practical exercises; such as reading menus or finding ‘use by’ dates; to show their effects.    

The session also covers lighting, the use of contrasting colours, tactile markers and descriptive language amongst other topics. It ends with some sighted guiding training to give attendees an insight into guiding visually impaired people, along with sampling how it feels to be guided.

We recently ran the course for a group of care workers, who found the practical exercises very useful. We also visited a group of graduate civil engineers and town planners, who were very engaged in discussions about the uses of contrasting colours, different surfaces and the effects of shadow on visually impaired pedestrians.

We are really excited to be able to offer this training and excited about the potential impact it could have on the lives of local visually impaired people. If you would like to know more please contact us on 01926 411331 or email [email protected].