IT widens horizons for visually impaired students

Henshaws College, in Harrogate, aims to use IT as a way of giving young people more independence both during their studies and in later life.

The college, which costs 7m a year to run, provides further education for 16-to-19-year-olds with disabilities or learning difficulties who also have impaired vision.

It has 45 residential places on its campus and has students from across the North of England mainly from areas around Leeds, York, and Harrogate, who are referred to Henshaws.

The college caters for students with varying disabilities and has three main curriculum areas: Literacy and numeracy, independence and vocational pathways. But the use of information technology is crucial regardless of the subject area or ability of the students.

Christine Sherman, the college's skills for life curriculum leader, said: "It is about empowering students with skills they can use outside of college: IT in the community and IT for leisure are a huge part of what we do.

"It allows the students to gain confidence in their own ability."

Henshaws, which relies on fundraising for around 40 per cent of its budget, is raising money for the creation of a new media centre which will allow students to work on their own films and produce their own radio programmes.

The plans, which are still being developed, include the creation of a new media suite comprising a performance area with a stage, lighting and sound systems and a sound-proofed room for radio broadcasting.

Students have also been involving in drawing up plans of what they want the centre to contain.

College principal Caroline Smale said: "Students at the college are able to study media and radio at Henshaws College and radio is particularly popular due to its accessibility for visually impaired and disabled people."

Henshaws students already have access to a variety of IT equipment throughout the college. It has a series of specialist computers catering for students with differing degrees of visual impairment, learning difficulty or motor skills. They also have access to a Wii Nintendo games console to play games on a large screen which physiotherapists say enables some students to exercise in a way they would be reluctant to do elsewhere.

Innovative IT also helps students with more mundane tasks, including a device known as a Pen Friend – developed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind – to allow people with impaired sight to label items in their kitchen and around the house, including foodstuffs, cleaning products, even film and music collections. The pen-shaped object reads a coded signal on a label and then announces what it is for users to hear.

It also possible for users to record important notes for their diary, and Henshaws team leader for mobility and orientation Paul Astick has been commissioned by the RNIB to research how the same device could be used to help sight-impaired pupils with learning difficulties.

The college hopes to be able to use the technology to transmit timetable information to students or for teacher's comments to be attached to returned work which the students can listen to by placing the pen over the coded message.

Mr Astick said: "I am looking at new uses for an existing technology. Its very user friendly for our students and it is something which will physically empower them in the actual world rather than technology just being something which is being used to help people in the virtual world."

The college is run by Henshaws Society for Blind People, which began work in Manchester in 1837, and which also now runs an arts and crafts centre in Knaresborough and has centres in Manchester, Merseyside and Newcastle.

The society was founded thanks to a 20,000 bequest in the will of Oldham businessman Thomas Henshaw. Following his death in 1810, his second wife contested the legacy, claiming he made the will "whilst mentally unbalanced". It was 23 years before the Court of Chancery ruled in favour of his original will and the first "blind asylum" opened in 1837.

Business boost for media centre

Henshaws College's fundraising efforts have been boosted by becoming the chosen charity of the Yorkshire International Business Convention, being held in June this year.

The event is expected to raise up to 10,000 towards its new media centre.

In the run up to the event Henshaws Arts and Craft Centre, in Knaresborough, has been making the 1,500 delegate bags to give out during the convention.

Each bag will carry one of 10 drawings designed at the centre.

The convention has been an annual fixture in the region's business calendar since 1995.