Education center for the visually impaired

Abstract

India is the home to the majority of the visually impaired population of the world. According to the World Health Organization (W.H.O), out of the 37 million people having visual impairment, 15 million are from India (World Health Organization (WHO), 2019). Out of these, 2 million are children and only 5% (1 lakh) are getting access to education. School education being the foremost step in shaping children to be independent adults and provide them a chance at a day to day conventional lifestyle. In such a scenario there is a need to develop the mind-set of designing multi-sensory educational spaces which could accommodate children with visual impairment. Visually impaired people navigate the world through non-visual senses and therefore have an imageability pattern distinct from our perception. It is therefore obvious that designing spaces for them has to have a different approach where their prominent senses are stimulated to enhance navigation, independence and learning. In a world which majorly depends on visual perception, it has become necessary to change how we design spaces in order to create spaces accessible to everyone in every sense. The main idea is not to treat visual impairment as a disability, rather treating them as people with different, special abilities. The design thesis focuses on to understand how the visually impaired people perceive spaces in a built environment, and how it which will further help in design spaces for enhanced movement and visualization of a space. The study will identify various design strategies which will be implemented in designing a multi-sensory school for the visually impaired.