VIScotland

VIScotland is a project based in the Scottish Sensory Centre (SSC).

Visual Impairment Scotland
Scottish Sensory Centre
The University of Edinburgh
Holyrood Road
Edinburgh EH8 8AQ

Telephone Number : 0131 651 6078
Fax Number : 0131 651 6502
Textphone : 0131 651 6067

Email : viscotland@ed.ac.uk
Website : www.viscotland.org.uk

VIScotland has six main objectives and these are;

• To develop and promote a new notification system for visually impaired children. The reason as to why this is important is because surprisingly we do not know how many visually impaired children there are in Scotland. So in order to get an accurate picture, we have asked parents of visually impaired children to notify or tell us about their child.
• We also have developed an information support service for parents that covers education and advice on applying for welfare benefits and access to low vision aids.
• One of our main objectives is to provide understandable and relevant medical information regarding the child’s visual condition in a variety of accessible formats.
• Another part of the service is the development a parent network support community, this is when other parents are able through giving explicit consent to contact other parents directly, thus giving each other the support they seek.
• We have also created a club for visually impaired children called viskids. This club brings together, and develops a sense of community for visually impaired children living throughout Scotland.
• As part of this club we have also designed a secure Internet based Chatroom for members of the club thus allowing the children to talk to each other in a safe environment.

Visual Impairment Scotland’s website was launched in March 2001, please feel free to have a look at our work which can be found at www.viscotland.org.uk