Special Support For Blind Student
Derby College has introduced a special resource for a visually impaired student who is the first to start on an Art and Design course at The Roundhouse.
Lucy Jones (20), who lost her sight at an early age, has joined the College having returned home to Derby from the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford where she has studied for nearly three years.
At Derby College, she is able to benefit from all the specialist learning resources that the 11 other visually impaired students also use including the Braille and embossing machines, special ‘talking’ computer software as well as a revolutionary new resource – Living Paintings – which brings pictures to life.
Raised 3D images, known as thermoforms which reveal the special shape and characteristics of the pictures, enable people with visual impairments to ‘look’ at them through touch and are accompanied by audio descriptions which tell the stories of the pictures, describe their visual features and provide instructions for touching and interpreting the thermoforms.
Lucy explained: “I have a great deal of help at the College and everyone has been really supportive. Everyone has bent over backwards to include me in all aspects of the course such as devising a texture wheel for me when the others were doing a colour wheel.
“The Living Paintings that they sources have been brilliant – especially when we all went to Edinburgh because I had a tour of the city on tape and thermoform examples of the architecture, stained glass, paintings and furniture that we visited.
“Coming to Derby College and more recently doing some volunteer work at Quad has given me so much confidence and I hope that I will be able to progress and go onto university to study art and particularly ceramics which is my real passion.”