Vital Link for effective out reach
Vision-Aid programs help to train school teachers to become more inclusive in their classrooms to support better learning outcomes for visually impaired students. Since its inception fifteen years ago, Vision-Aid has offered specialized computer training courses which equip not only visually impaired students with skills to use computer applications, but also a parallel program to train B.Ed. and Diploma in Ed. trainee teachers to sensitize them and equip them with skills to create more inclusive classrooms after they graduate and become teachers.
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- ,Over 750 teacher trainees have been trained with Vision-Aid’s intensive, one-week Administrator of Computer Applications (ACA) course, which equips the teachers with the tools and skills they will need to integrate visually impaired students in their classrooms.
- In 2019, Vision-Aid has already trained 73 teacher trainees who have successfully completed their one-week training program and Vision-Aid certification - 20 teachers from the Kaveri B. Ed Collège, Hyderabad and another 53 teachers completed training from LB College in Visakhapatnam.( the pictures shown are from the graduation ceremony at LB college ).

- In the next quarter, our Vizag Center will work with Andhra University to get their Special Education Post Graduate students trained at Vision-Aid Vizag, in the ACA program. Their 2019 batch of 24 PGs will spend one week in an intensive ACA training at our center. Andhra University Visakhapatnam is the lead university in the state of Andhra Pradesh. We sincerely thank the The Vice Chancellor as well as the HOD Education of Andhra Universitey for their valuable support.
- Despite the great progress much more needs to be done. India churns out an estimated 500,000 teacher trainees each year. Many of these teachers will be teaching in integrated class room settings which have visually impaired students.

- Some will even be teaching in Special schools and Blind schools. The majority of them are graduating without the requisite training or skills. In addition to the efforts on our own, Vision-Aid has also been lobbying the government to make the training in Access Technologies for the VI, a mandatory component of all B.Ed. and Diploma in Ed. programs. Hopefully this will happen soon, so that we can really begin to tackle the issue at scale and deliver more inclusive classrooms for all visually impaired students.
- Our training team in Vizag - Ms. Ramadevi Mangu, Ms. Pushpalatha Gutti, Mr. Ramesh Kumar, Dr. Sam Kumar,
Mr. V.L.Narasimham and Mr. M.S.Raju have done a remarkable job with their sustained efforts in this important area. We are very thankful to all our donors and supporters without whom such initiatives would not be possible.