Creating A Friendly Literate Environment For The Visually Impaired Students: A Study From “Louis Braille” School, Bulgaria

Abstract

Discussing about literacy makes us think about literacy for “normal” people. Only a few do care about thinking literacy for the visually impaired ones. However, there is a school in Sofia, Bulgaria that educates visually impaired students to be independent ones. While teaching in Bulgaria, the researcher met an independent blind girl joining the class. The challenging situation to teach a blind in class led the researcher to know her deeper. There are some surprising facts that she asked to get the material used in class to be sent to her mail; she did not join classes any more after some meetings as she was preparing her departure to America for a student-exchange program. She wrote her emails to the researcher and the communication later was done through emails; she asked for the researcher’s phone number so that further communication could be done through the phone. She picked up the researcher at a metro station nearby and led the researcher to the school, be an interpreter for both the director and the researcher, and guided the researcher to every room of the school, with no one help, when the researcher studied the way her previous school taught their visually impaired students’ literacy. This observation method led the researcher to know that the school really provides friendly literate environment that makes the students able to read and f ace any condition around them. Further, teachers give them confidence to face this life so that the visually impaired students live as normal people.