Disability is not inability

The VI Unit

Braille paper took two and a half months to arrive here. It came by air freight from the UK. The hold up was in customs clearance. It is, after all, only paper. The freight company waived the charges.
Visual impairment is often absolutely dependent on braille. The mural in the background helps us to see what they could be doing, but the VI students aren't all able to see it.
A partially sighted student helps to unpack the new batch of braille paper.

About five per cent of the students at Mvumi Secondary School are visually impaired. That means that they have difficulty seeing. 

The doctor went through the list of five in Form 1 (year 8 in the UK) who have just joined the school.

“She can see with one eye - well enough with glasses.”

“He needs dark glasses. He had his eyes removed a few years ago and has conjunctivitis. He must continue to learn braille.”

“She must continue learning braille - her eyesight is deteriorating and there isn’t anything that can be done.”

In their classroom they bump into things: us, for example. We are standing where they expect a space.

These students want music and aural things. They want maps and bones shapes that they can touch. They want simple maths but they aren't taught it.

They are always at the end of a list: sometimes they are taught with blackboards they can’t see, and with books they can’t read so they have to rely on someone to read for them so that they can take notes with a braille machine, have the notes printed on braille paper and then read them themselves.
So they do badly in exams.

They are, by and large, at the end of the money list.