Blindness and visual impairments can cause delays in various areas of development including sexual development. People with visual impairments may need additional support in a few areas including accessing information, education, and services.
Good quality, appropriate sexual health information and education should be available to all children, young people and adults. Nearly all forms of information around sexual health are visually based. Most information is leaned by watching other people's behaviour, looking at pictures and reading magazines or by watching television. Formal education should provide the opportunity to think about and discuss the enormous amount and complex nature of information, by putting it into context and perspective. The opportunities for incidental learning can be severely restricted where teaching aids are visual, and thus inaccessible.
It can sometimes be difficult for blind or visually impaired people to get hold of up-to-date and comprehensive information. However, it is possible to convert most written information into braille, large print or to have it recorded into audio format.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind
The Royal National Institute for the Blind provides a transcription service that can carry out the translation of written material into braille or audio format. The service is free for individuals and also available to organisations.
There are currently a number of general resources available around sexual health and in particular education for young people. The customer services department, based in Peterborough, can deal with enquiries to carry out transcription work for specific issues, and can provide this facility for almost any written material.
Links
Royal National Institute of the Blind
Tel: 0845 702 3153
Website: www.rnib.org.uk
