The Assembly was held in Shanghai, China, July 25-27, 2001, under the theme "Education for the Visually Impaired in the 21st Century: a Global Vision". Professionals in the field of education for visually impaired persons were invited to attend. Over 270 delegates from 12 countries participated. Together with the Vice-Mayor of Shanghai and others, including ICEVI president, Larry Campbell officiated at the opening. Larry Campbell’s keynote address was titled "Reaching Out to All Children: A Global Perspective and Six Critical Questions".
Eight sub-theme sessions were concurrently held during the Assembly. They included, Pre-school Education; Advance Technology in Support Learning; Professional Development for Teachers; Theory and Practice of Education; Inclusive Education; Continued Education, Vocational Education; Education of Multiply-handicapped Blind and Low Vision Rehabilitation. There were 63 papers presented around these eight sub-themes.
Six recommendations were made that provided the direction and clear guidelines to the future development of special education for the visually impaired in the East Asia Region.
All overseas speakers’ papers were recorded in CD ROMs and sent to the participants.
The regional Chair wishes to thank the ICEVI World President, the Deputy Regional Chair and the Secretary of ICEVI for their unstinting support of this event.
Follow-up actions taken on the recommendations made at the Regional Assembly
A. It was recommended that ICEVI should urge relevant software development companies to develop software for countries in the region, using local talents to assist in the process of developing local screen readers, speech synthesizers, and Braille translating devices in local language.
In this respect, the Regional Chair has contacted Chuck Mullins of Freedom Scientific to explore the possibility of developing a Chinese JAWS, a screen review software systems. He agreed to consider.
In the meantime, we have accepted the offer from the China Braille Publishing House to jointly support the development of comprehensive software for the blind amount of $100,000 (US). The Chinese Government has agreed to contribute $250,000 (US). This project is a total-solution approach aims at tackling Chinese computing for the visually impaired. The software’s functions included Braille production, optical character recognition (scanning of printed books) and internet surfing. It can convert Cantonese-Taiwanese Mandarin, Mainland Mandarin Braille into Chinese characters and vice versa. A company of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which possess extensive experience in language processing, has been chosen to the partner of this project.
When successfully developed in 18 months time, this comprehensive software is expected to revolutionise the world in Chinese computing for the visually impaired.
In view of this new development, Chuck Mullins of the FS has agreed to go to China to have a meeting with those in this project to see if FS could assist in any way.
B. In order to address the concern of professional development for teachers to promote more coherence in teacher preparation, ICEVI would encourage meetings to organize for interested teachers’ training institutes to meet and share their experiences and to empower them in improving the quality of training provided.
The Freedom Scientific has agreed to support a National Computer Training Course for Blind Schools Teachers to be held in Qingdao, China from May 1-7, 2002.
C. There is a need for some sort of structured meeting where there can be free flow of information and knowledge among the ICEVI delegates in sharing with one another, especially practical ideas and information on inclusive education.
Regional Chair has initiated sub-regional meeting for members from the three territories of China, i.e. Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong to be held in Qingdao, China in July 2002. She has solicited the views of Mr. Cai Zheng Li, the Principal of the Qingdao School for the Blind and Professor Chang Tsun Kao of Taiwan Normal University about this meeting, both are supportive of the meeting.
D. Education Resource Centres should be made available to support students and teachers for successful inclusion.
The Lee Foundation of Hong Kong has agreed to support the setting up of a provincial education resource centre in China through a grant to ICEVI. It is expected that ICEVI will play an important role in regard to training, evaluation and research activities.
E. It was suggested that a database should be developed so that people who are interested could exchange information on education and employment for the visually impaired on the web.
Regional Newsletter
The Regional Chair is in the process of editing the East Asian Regional newsletter will be published in early April 2002.
Suggestions
Regional chairs suggests that some sub-regions should be established and a deputy chair be appointed for each of the sub-regions. By so doing, the sub-regions could deal with ICEVI matters more efficiently and effectively according to their own situations. Countries such as China should form a sub-regions as could the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
In the future, Hong Kong can play a role to give resource support to those developing countries within the region in areas such as rehabilitation training and low vision training for teachers/rehabilitation personnel.
Grace Chan
ICEVI Chairperson, East Asia