"This project main goal is to influence and conduct the modernization of the education and training system used in organizations working in the field of visual impairment directly focusing on their professional bodies, bridging a deficiency of available specific training in this area in many of the participating countries, while, at the same time, promoting the exchange of experience and know-how between different types of organizations involved in education, training and youth in common subjects, transversal to all types of interventions with blind and low vision people. The project aims to widen the knowledge of these professionals by using digital technologies in rehabilitation services, educational training programs and vocational education and training (VET) of blind and visually impaired people. This goal is to be achieved through the organization of every aspect implied in the development of two online training courses, about “Coaching Orientation and Mobility” and ""Developing Visually Impaired People Soft Skills"", from the use of the LMS, curricula, content, certification, methods of administration and training support, etc - creating a Virtual Academy. The participant organizations all work in rehabilitation, education and vocational training of visually impaired people of all ages, except the partner providing the Learning Management System. The aim of the partnership is to create a standard resource on the various rehabilitation services for people with vision impairment in Europe and to propose a model of education, training and rehabilitation services for visually impaired people in all EU countries. During the project life, the next activities will be performed:1. Observing existed curricula both on national and EU level; Appointing working groups for developing Raw curricula; Evaluating and improving raw curricula; Conforming to ECVET terminology criteria. 2. Developing two Curricula based on raw curricula.3. Evaluating the Curricula.4. Selection and consolidation of available course modules from partners.5. Methodology guidance for Web-Based Training will be developed and presented focusing also on the needs of visually impaired trainers.6. Setup of the E-Learning courses using Web-Based Training; Develop course modules in EN.7. Executing of pilot course; Evaluating pilot course and introduce improvements to the developed courses accordingly.8. Online publishing course materials in English.9. Translation of the course material into the languages of the partner countries.10. Web-page, leaflet, poster and DVD with all intellectual outputs will be developed.11. 7 international meetings will be held.12. Multiplier events will be held: an International Conference and 7 internal national workshops in partner countries, for professionals and organizations working in this area, and a raising awareness event (""Dinner in the Dark""), for media and other fields professionals, outside of visual impairment area.13. The project envisages a lot of dissemination activities, e.g. press-releases, broadcasts, social media presence (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter).14. Internal evaluation of meetings, events, training materials, the pilot course will be constantly held. The new curricula on the e-learning platform and training courses are expected to have a strong impact both in the short and in the long run: participants will be able to try this new learning tool, all of them being professionals working in rehabilitation and vocational training centres for Visual Impaired People. In the long run, since seven of the partners are members of ENVITER network where 27 service providers for the focus group from 17 countries of the EU are represented, the proposed project will enable organizations to maximize the impact of lifelong learning developments and the use of e-learning methods to provide for the need for special training for their staff. All results are to be shared through a project website and through EUNESIS (EUropean NEtworking for Sensory Impairment Solutions) Knowledge Base. Better Training for professionals allows us to better support people with disabilities: children, adults or elderly people, in taking into account the specificities of the visual impairment and also the impact of the visual impairment on the person depending on his/her age."

The largest cause of sensory impairments is the ageing process with over 60. Rising life expectancy and increasing numbers of older people in the population in Europe means a growing number of individuals are affected by visual and hearing impairments. Thus, raising general awareness of problems and potential solutions is essential to maximising individual quality of life and minimising social isolation. A key challenge related to the quality of life of older people with sensorial impairments is the adequate training of the professionals working in care services addressed for this specific target group. Through surveys, events, workshops and daily work ENVITER and HIPEN (European networks representing organisations of professionals and experts in sensory impairments from 21 EU countries) collected information about the concrete learning needs of the professionals working with ageing people with sensory impairments. Based on this knowledge, 7 entities from these EU networks launched the SENSNET project with the aim of creating a European Academy that designed, developed, collected, tested and valorised innovative approaches and contents tailored to the specific needs of professionals that work with ageing people with sensory impairments. The main activities within the SENSNET project were as follows:- Design of the methodological guide for the learning programme- Development of the training materials for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and/or visual impairments in the areas such as, lighting and ergonomics and accessibility in society and in the daily life (access to culture and access to information and communication media)- Creation of an online learning platform for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and visual impairments- Development of training courses for professionals- Organisation of two multiplier events in Germany and FranceThe most important results achieved within the SENSNET project are: 1) Creation of the European Academy that provides training for professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments (SENSNET-EASI platform), 2) Creation of a European learning community of professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments, 3) Increased the knowledge base of the partners to have a more accurate awareness of professionals’ learning needs and priorities, 4) Improved skills of professionals involved in two rounds of the training course, 5) Creation of a comprehensive training strategy for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and visual impairments6) Increased awareness on the importance of the training of the professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments at national (Spain, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and United Kingdom) and European levels.The main target group of the project are workers at day care centres for older people, geriatric social workers, care workers for seniors, therapists for seniors, GPs, nurses, home-visiting care workers and other professionals that provide services to support ageing people with sensory impairments. Through the SENSNET activities these target groups have improved their occupational qualification and professional skills in the area of sensory impairments, especially related to hearing and visual problems. By participating in the SENSNET courses all of them became part of a European learning community of professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments and will be informed on the further training to be developed by ENVITER (European Network for Vision Impairment Training Education & Research) and HIPEN (European Network for Professionals working with People with Hearing Impairments). As long-term benefit can be mentioned, among others, the creation of the European Academy that will continue providing training for professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments beyond the project lifetime. To this end, the organisations belonging to the ENVITER and HIPEN networks will encourage their members to participate in the SENSNET courses that are available at the online platform sustained by the Dutch partner – Visio. Also it has to be emphasised that ENVITER has expressed the importance of and their interest in making sure that the efforts in the SENSNET Project will be taken further and will be made sustainable with support of the network.Finally, it is relevant to mention that the final beneficiaries of the SENSNET project are ageing people over 60 with visual and/or hearing impairments. Due to the SENSNET project, ageing people with sensory impairments will be able to use better qualify services provided by professionals who have carried out the tailored trainings.

According to the WHO’s “Universal eye health: a global action plan 2014-2019”, globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment or blindness, of whom at least 1 billion have a vision impairment that could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. Population growth and ageing will increase the risk that more people acquire vision impairment. WHO ‘s “World report on vision” (2019) states that effective and feasible rehabilitation interventions are currently available but they need for qualified rehabilitation professionals applying new user-centred and trans-disciplinary approaches in their daily practice. Currently the qualification of Visual Disabilities Rehabilitator (VDR) is not well-formalized, neither at national level (in National Qualification Frameworks) nor at EU level, since ESCO classification doesn’t refer to them. Worldwide, With the exception of few initiatives in USA and UK, the professional training of new specialist skills in the area of visual rehabilitation is left to the sporadic, isolated and self-referential initiatives of centres and associations; this fragmented approach affects the quality of the training and the recognition of a qualification. The main SCOPE of oMERO project is to overcome the identified mismatch between the skills currently offered by VDRs curricula and those actually demanded by healthcare institutions, private service providers and final end users. To this end the project will pursue the following objectives:1. to define a PROFESSIONAL PROFILE FOR VDRs, which can play a reference role at EU level for the formalization and the certification of the VDR qualification in order to motivate students to take up this career; it will be based on an accurate contextual and market analysis and on a Delphy study involving international experts.2. to define an EU REFERENCE CURRICULUM FOR VDR, general and “across-the-board”, but modular and flexible in order to be adaptable to any country and HEI; the Curriculum will meet the learning needs of students and the skills demand of labour market and will implement the trans-disciplinary approach, a strong WORK-BASED LEARNING COMPONENT and INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGIES; being LEARNING OUTCOME-ORIENTED” and compliant with the main EU standard and tools for VET in HE, it will support transparency and international mobility, as well as formal and informal competences recognition and validation.3. To up-skill and re-skill academics with new competences related to the design and delivery of the innovative VDR curriculum In order to support the proper use and contextualization of the Curriculum, specific Guides targeting Higher Education Designers and Teachers will be delivered, including detailed lesson plans. A virtual reality simulator for learning by experiencing visual disabilities in real time (REALTER) will be delivered, too. The Strategic Partnership is made by 8 full-partners from 5 EU Countries (Italy, Sweden, France, Lithuania and Ireland) and one International Associated Partner (ICEVI). 5 Higher Education Institutions with high skills in the sector, joined the partnership. 4 of them committed to implement HE courses based on oMERO Curriculum after the end of the project. To support this initiatives, the project will also deliver the program design and the learning materials for these courses, which will be made available at the end of the project for free use. Future teachers of these courses will be involved in a 5-DAYS SHORT-TERM JOINT STAFF TRAINING EVENT which will take place in Italy; it will be aimed to improve their skills and performance concerning the approach of the new Curriculum and innovative teaching methods and techniques; these skills could be transferred to other context and to other colleagues through best practices sharing.Coordinated by the David Chiossone Institute, a Service Provider representing the market demand with an high experience in VDR training, the partnership will persist even after the end of the project, strengthening the collaboration between higher education, research and business.The main target users of the project will be HE INSTITUTIONS, STUDENTS and TEACHERS. HE INSTITUTIONS will widen their educational offer with a relevant study program that allow students to acquire the breadth and depth of skills they need. HE DESIGNERS AND TEACHERS will improve their performances, in line with the renewed Agenda for Higher Education. Thanks to oMERO project, HE STUDENTS will be able to attend well-designed higher education curricula, centered on their learning needs and awarding a certification for a well-defined occupation, being relevant for the labour market. HEIs participating in the project will profit from the project impact since they will be able to implement new he courses based on oMERO curriculum, relying on project results.

In all the EU countries, rehabilitation centres specialised in the support of children with visual impairment have more and more cases of children with central visual disorders and a low vision. Our organisations have already developed methodologies and procedure for the support of children for which the visual impairment is due to a dysfunctioning of the eye, as an organ. When the visual impairement is caused by a cererbral background, the impact for children is totally different for the daily life and compensation means we use usually doesn't work. There are more and more cases and this constat is due to the improvement of medical knowledge, and that we didn't identify before the causes of their visual impairment. This is a real issue for all the rehabilitation organisations in Europe, which want to develop/set up a process of evaluation and support, as a standard for our organisations. Our experience with these children show us that they need to have a specific approach in the comprehension of the impact of their disabilities and in the support modalities to set up. And despite the improvement of scientific knowledge on this question, modalities of support are too often some individual processes, without concertation and very isolated, locally. It is important to work together on the development of a coherent and pluridisciplinary process at EU level. In consequence, the objectives of CVI Project were to gather all the experiences of the partners and to develop a common process and common tools to improve the support of visually impaired children with cerebral visual impairment. The partnership is composed of 8 organisations from Europe and one from Quebec, all are specialists in the rehabilitation of visually impaired people. Among the 9 partners, 5 of them are french speaking (MFAM, IRSAM, CRDV from France, IRSA from Belgium and INLB from Longueuil in Quebec). The 4 other organisations are coming from Spain (2), The Netherlands and Croatia. The partnership has developed : - a protocol of assessment for a pluridisciplinary assessment of central visual disorders, working with different professionals : ophtalmologists, orthoptists, neuropsychologists, working with existing tools already used, and adapted to the group when necessary. - A handbook to give the knowledge of the process, the referral to the tools used, and how it works, with the contents of the tools developed in the project.- A questionnaire for relatives and surrounding of the children to support the assessment of the children. -An individual passport in which could be described simply for the environnement the impact of disorders in the life of the child, and also with a key card, a template layed out in A5 format to know more about the context of the child concerned. - A guide (called training course) to enable the professionals to use in a suitable way the outcomes of the project for the benefit of these children. The impact of this project is very important and the number of professionals concerned by these developments is huge. with difficulty to count approximately this figure, we know that at least in the francophone network (composed of 33 organisations in francophone countries), this is approximately 5000 professionnals concerned near or far by the developments. We can say that the impact is very huge in consideration with also the other EU countries