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A Conclusion by the Regional Chair of the ICEVI East Asia Region
For the ICEVI East Asia Regional Assembly held from
25 to 27 July, 2001 in Shanghai, China
1. I must congratulate all of you for a very successful Assembly this year. With reference to the summary report of the chairpersons of the sub-theme sections, it is recommended that collaboration and cooperation should be promoted among people working with visually impaired. We should look for ways to allow people to share information with each other on latest development so that solutions to particular issues and problems can be learned by one another. In this regard, it is recommended that ICEVI would coordinate the organization of small structured meetings and forums for countries in the region.
Performance by the Visually Impaired Children at the Closing Ceremony
As we have very little time for a thorough discussion last night, we thought that we should come up with some preliminary recommendations so that immediate action could be initiated by ICEVI. These recommendations are not perfect and they will be thoroughly discussed during the next ICEVI Regional Committee meeting.
2. It is also recommended that ICEVI will 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 languages. ICEVI could help in liaising with the local talents in this process. A web-site for loading information on this process and other information exchange is to be developed.
3. University education should be offered to visually impaired people who are qualified and more choices should be made available to them. ICEVI would discuss this important issue in the next regional committee meeting.
4. In order to address the concern of professional development for teachers to promote more coherence in teacher preparation, ICEVI would encourage meetings to be organized for interested teachers' training institutes to meet and share their experiences and to empower them in improving the quality of training provided.
5. The promotion for inclusive education should be the first among the list of recommendations.
6. Furthermore, we must reiterate the six critical foci emphasized by our President, Mr. Larry Campbell as follows:
a) Education for visually impaired children should begin as early as possible.
b) All programme models should be used for direct services to visually impaired children and preparation of personnel must be provided.
c) Children must be encouraged to use residual vision.
d) Children with additional disability should be valued the same as any other children.
e) New technology should be enhanced.
f) Children should be prepared for working in the real world.
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