By Bida Elly David
The Visually impaired students who are in senior four, currently sitting for their national certificate of education are encountering difficulties in answering the exams due to lack of resources and instructor who could guide them during the process of curriculum coverage through the use of typing brail.
In an interview with No.1 Citizen Newspaper Daily Newspaper yesterday, one of the senior four visually impaired candidates from Juba Day Secondary school, Stella Peter said that visually impaired students in most schools have been faced with a number of difficulties that make them not to focus on learning.
Stella said they faced difficulties while studying because there are no specialised instructors who would otherwise have helped them a lot.
“We, the visually impaired students in most schools have encountered a number of challenges making it difficult to focus on learning. Difficulties in copying notes, answering class works and assignments due to absence of specialised instructors who are capable and experienced in undertaking visually impaired techniques of lesson delivery, some of the constraints are impacting us negatively,” said Stella.
Stella underscored that she pitied most of the teachers who have been struggling to ensure that they at least captured enough knowledge from the coverage but due to lack of specialised skills, they could not make it to their best.
She reiterated that their school lacked specialised teachers to handle students with visual impairment towards learning and the untrained teachers were the ones using their efforts ensuring that these students benefited together with the other students.
“I sincerely pity our teachers in Juba Day Secondary School struggling to ensure that they at least invest enough knowledge from the coverage to us but due to lack of specialised skills, they could not make it to their best,” she said.
However, Stella said that despite doing the secondary Certificate of Education currently, she did not have senior notes due to lack of resources and a person to guide her while copying.
Furthermore, she urged the government not to take persons with disability for granted rather train enough teachers for both primary and secondary schools to handle them.
Stella jagged out community and government at all levels not to underrate them since there is no country in the globe existing without persons with disability.
“We are calling upon the government to give special consideration to persons with disability especially the visually impaired by training enough teachers both for primary and secondary schools to handle them and community and government at all levels should not underrate us since there is no country in the globe existing without persons with disability,” she said.
In his part, Jimmy Jaas Augustine, also a visually impaired candidate said that they also faced difficulties in making diagrams such as maps and others since they could not see.
Jimmy urged policy makers to train some teachers on the use of typing brail to enhance the visually impaired with access to notes easily without challenges.
“Due to lack of specialised teachers on the use of the typing brail, we were faced with difficulties towards answering questions,” Jimmy reiterated.
He appreciated the teachers of Juba Day Secondary School especially the Head Teacher for having considered enrolment of persons with disability in the academic field.