Blind
at CSULB see brighter days with support
group
By Ramón Torres
On-line Forty-Niner
Brighter
Days, a support group for students with
blind and visually impaired disabilities,
is scheduled to start next week at Counseling
and Psychological Services at Cal State
Long Beach.
CSULB provides services to more than 1,300
students with disabilities each semester,
and a significant amount of them face visually
impaired disabilities, according to the
CSULB Web site.
“The idea of the support group for the blind
and visually impaired students is to give
students an arena to share information and
discuss concerns related to their success
as students at Cal State Long Beach,” said
Lou Preston, who has a master’s in education
and will be one of the facilitators of the
support group. “And to, in general, promote
sort of a healthier environment for the
student who happens to be blind or visually
impaired. That’s the bottom line.”
Brighter Days has been offered for the last
two semesters and although the group focuses
on the blind and visually impaired, students
with other disabilities are welcome to attend,
Preston said.
“If there are students that feel they have
something to share or have some concerns
and are not blind or visually impaired but
are disabled, they are welcome to come,”
Preston said.
The major challenge facing visually impaired
college students is the overwhelming amount
of printed materials, such as textbooks,
class outlines and class schedules with
which they are confronted. In addition,
the increasing use of films, videotapes,
personal and mainframe computers, and overhead
projectors add to the volume of visual material
that students must access in some other
way, according to the CSULB Web site.
Technology such as screenreaders or closed
caption televisions, which enlarge the page,
enable many visually impaired students to
work independently without relying on assistance
from others, said alternative media specialist
Lethia Cobbs from the High Tech Center at
CSULB.
“The support group would be helpful for
students in dealing with issues that
they face on campus and the world at large,”
Cobbs said. “ Some of the issues range from
placing Braille near printed classroom boards
to access on items placed by their professor
on Beachboard.”
Preston said some usually disabled students
have concerns about transportation and the
sharing of technological information. As
most support groups, Brighter Days is designed
to be a sharing experience.
“Students first of all are able to realize
they are not the only ones that are encountering
this kind of concern,” Preston said. “Then,
in terms of the sharing experiences, share
the things they are able to do in the area
of independent living so it might be something
that students use, a method or technic,
that they find very successful.”
|
