Echolocation for People with Visual Impairment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Echolocation for People with Visual Impairment

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

Project Echolocation for Visually Impaired People (EchoProVIP) aimed to introduce and develop new and innovative competence for educators of visually impaired people – orientation and mobility instructors – in area of human echolocation skills tailored to special needs of blind people. It was realised by transfer and extended development of training curricula for orientation and mobility instructors (on how to teach this skill to visually impaired people), compendium of knowledge and resources related to that field and set of recommendations supporting its incorporation in existing programmes. The area of human echolocation use is still not widely implemented in the world in rehabilitation of people with vision problems but its tremendous advantage is proved by many research and practice. It is growing field especially in United States of America but still very little recognised and particularly little applied in Europe.

Due to activities foreseen in our project, the significant advancement in echolocation training for visually impaired people has been achieved. Hereby project also has contributed to further development of blind people confidence which is main factor for their motivation, activeness and empowerment in all areas of life. The adequate rehabilitation or habilitation training for people is a condition for their mobility, independence and in consequence their capability to more reasonable and ambitious educational choices, employment and civil activity.

Our project has resulted with three main outputs:
1. Curricula of Echolocation training for specialists teaching visually impaired people;
2. Compendium with selection of articles, elaborated texts and resource materials
3. Recommendations – presenting detailed and practical possibilities to incorporate in the most effective way the new type of training in the standard orientation and mobility training experienced so far.

The direct results of our project included not only tangible innovative outputs but also:
– A group of 12 orientation and mobility instructors for visually impaired people (4 from Lithuania and 8 from Poland) that have completed intensive echolocation training,
– Group of partners representatives who gained advanced expertise and experiences in echolocation for blind people,
– The group of minimum 24 visually impaired adults who benefited from testing training and actively participated in evaluation process,
– Significant group of orientation and mobility instructors and representatives of visually impaired population in partner countries (at least 255 in total) who have increased their competences but also awareness in the field and can serve in future as good examples and promotors,
– The basis to continue expansion of echolocation competence as one of very important and very powerful skill for visually impaired people.

The international partnership consisting of 4 partners included: Institute for Regional Development Foundation – FIRR (Poland), applicant, Instituttet for Blinde og Svagsynede – IBOS (Denmark), Kommunikationscentret, Region Hovedstaden – KC-RH (Denmark) and Kauno Prano Daunio ugdymo centras (Lithuania).
The expertize of Danish partners was transferred and together with contribution of partners experiences, combined with intensive research, exchange and sharing of know-how, practice , ideas, wide evaluation through testing training and its important practical part, as well as innovative input coming, among others, from foreseen experts and stakeholders wide consultation.
International context also brought about the availability of few language versions of materials in the project (partner countries languages and English as working language) what was facilitating not only their application in partner countries but also facilitate wide dissemination process of our achievements.

Our project results are not only to influence extremely the area of adult education for people with visual impairments and their educators qualifications but also have a potential to be transferred to other sectors as for example higher education of those professionals (who were consulted on various stages of our project), as well as other target groups who might benefit a lot from implementation of new training in their regular work.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 182160 Eur

Project Coordinator

FUNDACJA INSTYTUT ROZWOJU REGIONALNEGO & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Kommunikationscentret, Region Hovedstaden
• Kauno Prano Daunio ugdymo centras
• Instituttet for Blinde og Svagsynede, IBOS