Inclusive education in Brovary: how the community supports children with sensory impairments
Kyiv • UNN
The Brovary community creates an inclusive educational environment for students with visual and hearing impairments. The city provides special textbooks, technologies, and programs in cooperation with the Inclusive Resource Center.
The Brovary community is actively adapting the educational environment for children with sensory impairments, providing access to special textbooks, technologies and inclusive programs. By applying innovative methods and cooperating with the Inclusive Resource Center, the city seeks to create equal opportunities for all students. This was reported to UNN by the Brovary City Council.
Adaptation of the educational environment for students with special educational needs and sensory impairments (vision and hearing) is an important component of ensuring equal educational opportunities. The adaptation of such students in the community is carried out taking into account the characteristics of these children and recommendations in accordance with the conclusions of the Inclusive Resource Center
According to the Brovary City Council, educational institutions use special textbooks, gadgets, and didactic material. In particular, textbooks and books with enlarged fonts or audiobooks, which allows a visually impaired student to access textual information in a form convenient for the student.
The organization of educational space for visually impaired students is carried out taking into account lighting, safe arrangement of objects, marking areas of different textures, which helps to navigate the room.
Brovary city authorities also pay attention to adapting the educational space for students with hearing impairments. In particular, they use subtitles on video lessons and special programs for text messages. In addition, specially adapted textbooks with visual support and interactive educational programs with graphic elements are used. This allows children to better perceive educational material through the visual channel.
Children also have access to electronic versions of programs and textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science for use in general secondary education institutions for children with special educational needs on the website of the Institute for Modernization of Education Content and electronic versions of textbooks on the websites of the Institute for Modernization of Education, the Ranok Publishing House, mozaWeb, and the website of the All-Ukrainian School Online, etc.
The city council also noted that the collection of literature adapted for people with visual and hearing impairments in the libraries of educational institutions is also formed through charity events and gift publications.
Since September 2024, the community's lyceums have received 44 types of textbooks for students with special educational needs in the amount of 798 pieces. These include: for students in grades 1-2 - 17 types with hearing loss, 7 types with intellectual disabilities, 1 type with severe speech impairment; for students in grades 5-7, 9-10 with intellectual disabilities - 19 types.
Add
In the Brovary City Territorial Community, 2,256 children with special educational needs are registered with the Inclusive Resource Center (IRC), of whom 1,426 are preschoolers and 830 are schoolchildren. To ensure access to education for these children, the community has created numerous inclusive initiatives and accommodations.
Recall
Earlier, UNN reported that the city authorities of Brovary are developing a program for 4-5 years to improve accessibility and comfortable movement of people with disabilities. In particular, the Brovary community plans to equip special lifts for people with disabilities in apartment buildings. According to Mayor Ihor Sapozhko, this option is optimal for the community's old apartment buildings.
Olena Akopian, an advisor to the mayor of Brovary, told UNN that all public institutions in Brovary are accessible for people with disabilities. All major shopping centers are equipped with ramps, elevators, and hygiene rooms for people with disabilities. Various commercial establishments and organizations have begun to seek consultations more often to properly equip or redesign their entrances to make them accessible to people with disabilities.
In addition, the city has a diving rehabilitation project for Ukrainian soldiers who lost their limbs defending Ukraine from Russian occupiers, family members of the victims, internally displaced persons, and veterans.
