The Con-nection Foundation for the Deaf-Blind Support, together with the Con-nection Academy and the Art. Lebedev Studio, has created an All-Russian information and educational portal for people with multisensory impairments. It can be found by following the link: edu.so-edinenie.org
According to news agencies in Russia, the topic of disability concerns almost every fifth family. In addition, people with various types of disabilities today, in a pandemic, find themselves in a difficult psychological situation: they have no communication, they lack support, they are in an information vacuum.
The Con-nection Foundation, adjusting to the conditions dictated by the pandemic, adapted its projects as much as possible for a remote work format. However, most of the existing educational, psychological, entertainment and other services do not take into account the physical characteristics and needs of a special category of citizens. For example, there is no sign language translation, no audio commentary for pictures and infographics, they are not read by the audio assistant used by blind people.
The informational and educational portal contains various webinars and courses adapted to the peculiarities of perception of people with hearing and visual impairments. The portal also has courses necessary to improve the competence of specialists who work with deaf-blind people and people with other severe multiple disabilities; materials for deaf-blind relatives, volunteers.
Portal users register and get access to individually selected materials in their Personal Accounts. The ward's personal account saves all settings that are convenient for a person with hearing and vision impairments and reproduces them the next time they visit the portal. The specialists registered on the portal also get the opportunity to get advanced training and participate in the events of the professional community through their personal accounts.
“While creating the All-Russian Information and Educational Portal for People with Multisensory and Other Disabilities, we set ourselves the task of increasing the availability of inclusive education, as well as adapting informative and entertaining materials,” said Yulia Shlyandina, Fundraising Director of the “Con-nection".
The portal will be regularly updated with fresh and relevant materials, expanding the audience of users. Online events of the foundation and partner non-profit organizations: webinars and conferences - will be held on the portal.
“According to Rosstat, in Russia there are more than 281 thousand people with visual impairments, the number of visually impaired people is in the millions. The situation is similar with hearing impairment. These people are full of energy, thoughts, and they know how to create! The main thing is to support and develop their abilities, ”said Aleksey Slukin, strategist at Art. Lebedev Studio.
The information and educational portal was launched on November 22, 2021. A lot of useful content is already available on it. Here is some of them:
- culinary show of the Belogortsev family (with translation into RSL and audio description);
- the silent film "Voyage to the Moon" of 1902 with audio commentary and text description;
- webinar "Getting free legal aid" with translation into RSL;
- online excursion to the Museum of Russian Impressionism with translation into Russian sign language.
Announcements of upcoming online events:
- On November 25 at 12:00 a webinar for parents "How does your child see?" Proglyadova Galina Aleksandrovna, Candidate of Pedagogy, Associate Professor of the Department of Correctional Pedagogy, KSPU named after V.P/ Astafyev;
- November 27, 11:00 opening of the all-Russian online project "Club of Practitioners" - creating a space for professional communication and exchange of successful practices between specialists from different regions.
Dates of other events will be announced soon:
- an initial course for parents raising children with hearing and vision impairments;
- online program social theater in Russia;
- a cycle of video lectures on the topics of teaching children and caring for adults with visual and hearing impairments;
- a discussion club for the deaf-blind.
“The pandemic has rapidly digitalized life, and not everyone has equal access to digital opportunities. Severstal considers it especially important to support the project aimed at creating an inclusive portal for people with disabilities (OVZ), so that they have access to modern technologies, services and services. Quite often the so-called. adaptation of sites is reduced only to the creation of a separate version for the visually impaired, but this may not be enough taking into account the needs of all people with disabilities. When designing this All-Russian information and educational portal, various life scenarios and different needs of people with disabilities are provided for and taken into account, we are sure that this will help users to acquire the necessary knowledge and develop their creative abilities, " Natalya Poppel, Advisor to the General Director for Sustainable Development at Severstal, shared her opinion.
“For us, the need to support the creation of the portal was obvious, because it is a kind of window into the world, a social network for people with hearing and vision impairments, contributes to their development and integration into society,” said the Director of the Personnel Department of LLC Bayersdorf (trade mark Nivea) Elena Prudnikova.
Yulia Lizicheva, Program Director of the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation: “Hearing and vision impairments leave an imprint on people's daily life - not only does it make it difficult to perform everyday tasks, but also the process of perceiving information, including in digital format. Fortunately, we can make the digital space more “friendly”. An important work in this direction is being carried out by the Con-nection Foundation, the winner of the New Dimension anti-crisis competition of the Effective Philanthropy charitable program of the Potanin Foundation. Thanks to the initiative and experience of colleagues from the foundation and a number of other non-profit organizations, an information and educational platform was created for the blind and hard of hearing people. We are pleased to be able to support the creation of such a resource and contribute to improving the quality of life of people with disabilities."
“MTS, as a socially responsible company, sees its main mission as ensuring the availability and quality of services provided for everyone. Supporting projects for people with hearing and vision impairments has become especially important in the context of the expansion of distance learning, counseling, and telemedicine. For many years, MTS has been supporting people with hearing impairments - this is the accompaniment of sign language translation of content for children, holding events with translation into Russian sign language, etc. We hope that such projects will scale and improve ", - Elena Seregina, Head of the Center for Social Responsibility, Diversity and Inclusion, MTS PJSC.
Implemented by the winner of the New Change competition of the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation with the support of Severstal PJSC, Bayersdorf LLC and MTS PJSC.
.
