Title: Integrated education for disabled blind

Sector: Integrated education for the Disabled

Country/Location: Cameroon, Yaoundè

Local counterpart: Promhandicam Association

Target: Up to now, the center has a staff of 141 children, including 61 students with different types of disability and 79 children and young people who have no particular problems.

Description: The Promhandicam is a private non-profit association for the social advancement of the disabled, who for years managed the only school for the blind in Cameroon. The School for the Blind has been transformed into a mixed school to facilitate the social integration of blind children and other disabled children who now attend school with normal children. The institute comprises six classes of primary school. At the end of the cycle is obtained a diploma in Fine Elementary Studies (CEP). Blind children are studying with the Braille method and at the end of the second year they are able to use a typewriter or computer. The programm provides also practical reaching for mobility and autonomy in daily life (orientation training, the use of the white cane). The school is also involved in teaching the blind (the expenses are incurred by Promhandicam) attending the high schools and the University of Yaoundé: school teachers are involved in the translation of their documents and the transcription in Braille during their probations a examinations. In total there are 45 pupils and students: 24 in elementary, 11 in secondary school (high school) and 9 in the secondary level (University). The Braille Production Centre (predictive text for the blind), officially inaugurated during the World Sight Day on 09/10/2003, is an extension of the School for Blind Children. Using a speech synthesis software and a Braille display, a text can be corrected using a computer by a  completely blind person. With the recent wireless Internet connection, transcribers are now able to search the texts on the Internet and download portions of a document or the entire text. With this method, the production time to write a book decreases. Once transcribed into Braille the book is directly printed on a special printer (Braille printers).