antardrishti.org

Preface

We at Antardrishti has been devoted towards prevention of blindness,&empowerment of visually impaired for the past six years. During the course of our efforts we have carried an introspection of our limitations and evaluated at length,the major cause and preventive measures of blindness. It is found that most cases of blindness occurs during infancy and childhood due to neglect,lack of awareness and accidents. It is reassuring that large number of case of blindness can be mitigated through timely detection and treatment.

Our survey also led us to the fact that school teachers can play a significant role towards prevention of blindness amongst children.

We followed up our study by informal interaction,workshop,and brain storming session with educationist,doctors,school teachers and social workers and felt that urgent need of preparing a user manual for teachers,that enables them in a simplistic yet holistic manners to address this issue at the root cause. Moreover,this manual shall also come handy to educate parents and guardians during parents-teachers meetings/interaction.

We have incorporated the views and suggestion of teachers,ophthalmologist and instructor in the manual. It is hoped that this manual shall serve as a useful training aid towards prevention of blindness amongst children.

We welcome new ideas and suggestions on the subject and shall be glad to incorporate them in the future.

About the Manual

This manual has been prepared with the intent that children are not only gradually educate about protecting their own vision but also develop an sensitivity towards the problems of the visually impaired.

The exercise in the manual are focused on teaching children about the significance of protecting and caring for their own eye sight as also imparting valuable tips towards prevention and care of eye sight.

The first exercise is aimed at making children realise the invaluable role of their eyes and informing them how damaged/poor vision can drastically impair their lives. They should be able to grasp this fact themselves. In the second exercise. We shall attempt to educate children on the importance of eye and the resultant difficulties faced in the impaired vision. We shall also endeavor to motivate children to act with a sense of social responsibility while dealing with the visually impaired and to give them equal respect.

After having taught the children,the significance of the eyes,the third exercise shall impart basic information about the symptoms of eye diseases/ailments. Occasionally timely intervention is raised out due to non recognition of symptoms of eye diseases. Thus it is important that to know a simple diagnostic eye test. Exercise four is illustrated a simple diagnostic vision test that does not require the supervision of an ophthalmologist/doctor.

Having educated children on the importance of vision,symptoms and preventive care,it is essential to teach children how to protect their eye sight. Teachers must exploit the medium of informal discussion to make children aware of these important aspects.

There is a sumarised information on the salient aspects of the subject as the ready reckoner for teachers which can be used by the teachers during the exercise.