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The atmosphere is rather calm in Marylou Bourgin’s class, a room decorated in Halloween colors. Three students around her, Muadh in CP who goes to her other school in Quimper in the afternoon, Tristan in CE2 who meets his classmates after eating at the Loctudy school and Gabriel who also studies in CM1 at the school in Pluguffan. They are all three visually impaired and benefit from three of the eight places special education in Finistère proposed by IPIDV, Initiatives for the inclusion of the visually impaired, active since 1988.
In the morning, the three of them meet in this room at the Jacques-Prévert school, in Quimper, in a studious atmosphere. “They are there to learn techniques in addition to school programs, techniques specific to their needs”, explains Marylou Bourgin. “It can be learning braille, it can be learning computer science. It also involves working on mental representations. For example, when you are visually impaired, how do you understand the geometry of a cube? How to draw a circle? We work a lot on multi-sensory manipulation.
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In the afternoon, they are the only visually impaired people in the classes of their other schools. And their teacher is then not specialized. “We are in contact with the inclusion teachers. I am in contact with them to adapt their teaching. They rely a lot on oral, problem solving or mental calculations. In reading, this can be audio readings if they are long. And the transcription service will provide them with the transcription of the documents they need.” Because for some, this involves documents transcribed into Braille: texts, for example, even if for novels it quickly becomes very complicated. Mathilda, by Roald Dahl, placed on one of the tables, is several kilograms of rejected paper.
Aurélie Lagain
For Gabriel, in CM1, it is moreover learning braille. Until now, he had been reading in black (black on white) since CP. But with more and more difficulty, more and more fatigue. Which means that for several weeks now, he has joined adapted teaching. He shows us his binder: very large texts, he knows the font by heart, “Arial Black 28”, and explains that for one page of his comrades, he has two or three, double-sided. The solution to allow him to continue reading is to switch to braille. So in a way, learning to read again. Read Braille to do math too, with a ruler and a square with holes, specific plastic sheets to draw lines in relief.
Aurélie Lagain
Muadh, his fate at “Perkins”, to show how he learns to read and write. His handicap prevents him from learning to write in black, he began last year, in the upper section, to learn Braille with Marylou Bourgin. “Braille is little dots that you can feel with your hands!” Six large main keys for what looks from a distance like a vintage typewriter and combinations to remember for writing each letter, number and punctuation.
Muadh writes his first name without any mistake and knows how to reread the date with the pads of his fingers of the day written in braille a little higher on the sheet. Gabriel says he “likes smelling, and working with the Perkins.” Is Braille complicated anyway? “For a sighted person, no, it’s just a matter of code, because I read with my eyes“, estimates the teacher. “But to learn it with your fingers, it requires enormous tactile development and depending on your personality, it can be learned! You must not crush it, you must not be too light either and you must really put your fingers as it should be. With Muadh who is in CP, we already started the work in the middle section here, it was pre-braille every morning. We only really started braille in CP. It’s really a huge job. And then it will last until the end of his schooling. Because after braille, there is abbreviated braille which makes it possible to reduce the weight and size of the documents. then there is also mathematical braille which is something else again. Fractions: for us, as a sighted person, it is a number, a bar, a number below. In braille, it is also linear. geometry, history-geography, it’s a learning process, because they don’t have a global vision at all. It’s a job that you learn every day. is enormous compared to a clairvoyant.
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Tristan is also visually impaired, but he sees enough to be able to use a computer. And he learns to find his way around the keyboard keys thanks to suitable software, reminiscent of typing software. It’s essential to know how to use it because then he can use it to write in his Loctudy class in the afternoon.
Independent for college
Marylou Bourgin also works in classes where other visually impaired children attend school in the afternoons. Objective, make children independent before middle school. Because in sixth grade, it will be 100% inclusion for everyone, different rooms and the obligation to move, to go from one to the other. Laurent Bourrien has been teaching secondary education since 1999: “The tools have evolved, the IT tools, all the supports ultimately. There, the tools make them more and more autonomous.”
Another difficulty, “They don’t have just one teacher or two teachers either. But they ultimately have a complete team of teachers. And the difficulty for them is often having to adapt to a pace that is completely different. They face them lots of different teachers and therefore so many profiles and personalities with whom we will have to learn to work so that they know how to anticipate things, how to truly include the child in the class so that he can hold his place student at full capacity finally.”
Lien constant
“Teachers are not specifically trained. This is why, in effect, we continue to work with the specialized teacher. Our students have additional hours of lessons in their schedule and we deepen our mastery of the tools, we rework with them all the difficulties they may encounter so that they can take control. We ensure constant contact with the host teaching team all year round. It’s not just information. At the start of the year, we are present in the establishment, they can question us, contact us with any difficulties. And the idea is above all to collect from them the technical difficulties that may arise, which they do not have to manage themselves, in order to be able to rework them with the student who will find their own solutions. own solutions.”
Documents are transcribed in cases of severe visual impairment, which forces teachers to anticipate their lessons. “We can qualify with students who have a more moderate visual impairment, who are equipped with a laptop and software such as voice synthesis, screen magnification. We invite teachers to provide digital media to students. And in the same case, teachers do not have to make any particular efforts apart from simply the digital availability of the materials they work on in class, the students themselves work on accessing the documents.”
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And the system works, as demonstrated by Alain Hick, from Pont l’Abbé. His daughter Marie is visually impaired, now a student in Paris. She was taken care of from kindergarten to high school and “obtained her baccalaureate with honors, and above all, she obtained complete autonomy! She learned to learn her courses, to revise and then to use the spirit of synthesis and pass her exams.”
Much remains to be done
But there is a lot to do according to Alain Hick who is also an administrator of IPIDV: “Above all, the State must take charge of many things which today are not. In first grade, during my daughter’s French exam, there was an emergency subject which was taken out and it was not transcribed. She ended up with only one subject, which does not give equal opportunities. The second element is that at the end of her baccalaureate she obtained with. well, she went to university. The University refused any transcription, which put her in failure. Then, the State does not do its job at all. Most of them are not transcribed and accessible to the visually impaired, which is a disaster. We can also mention all the publishers whose books remain mostly inaccessible to the visually impaired. is a considerable job, but the 2005 law clearly indicates that the State must take responsibility and that is why, in May 2024, they were ordered to enforce all of these elements and they must. today, particularly for software, under penalty of a fine of 50,000 euros per software, having to make it accessible to the visually impaired.”
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