“We have just brought in a new online Visual Impairment Awareness Training module to sit alongside our face to face and virtually delivered sessions. We decided to pursue an online platform as we found that some organisations were finding it hard to either get people together at one time in a room or to get everyone to log on for a virtual session at the same time, but still wanted to access the training which they can now do so on an individual basis. Anyone can access it and the feedback we have had so far has been great”. Josh, Henshaws
The new online training was set up quickly, especially given the current circumstances, and there is text and audio for each section for increased accessibility. Learners can do the training in their own time. They can even leave it and come back at any point, with the progress being saved along the way.
Josh added, “My colleague Simon is the person who takes people through the online platform. He worked with a videographer and imagined he was delivering it to a person. Simon is our Rehabilitation Officer here at Henshaws, and it was him who developed and honed this awareness training. As part of the training, we use doctored images so people can imagine how that image would appear to those with a visual impairment and there is also a section with different signs to look for that a person may be suffering with a sight issue but doesn’t want to tell anyone.”
The training gives knowledge and reduces barriers. “It’s a good way of people really starting to think about visual impairment and they say to me that now we need to know even more.”
These are just two comments we have had about the training already:
"The explanations around different types of impairment was particularly of interest."
"The session was really informative and interesting. Josh really engaged us and got us thinking! I learned to think about sight loss very differently and feel much more confident engaging with our learners who are sight impaired. The practical tasks really helped grow my understanding about what it might be like to live with a visual impairment and what support might be useful from others."
