Smart Readers Liberia, Inc.
Smart Readers's Visually Impaired" Literacy Program is designed to empower children and young adults with visual impairments by equiping them with functional literacy skills, life skills, and confidence to participate fully in schooland community life. The program aims to teach braille, tactile literacy large-print reading, and listerning comprehension, while building orintation, mobility, and independent learning strategies. In addition to fostering literacy, the program supports inclusive education by training mainstream teacheers and caregivers. The program also focuses on measurable outcomes, such as reading fluency, comprehension, and School retension rate.
The program primarily serves children age 4 - 18 with visual impairments, including both low-vision and blind students, while also engaging parents, caregivers, and mainstream teachers to support their learning.The beneficiaries of the program are identified through community outreach, school referrals, and health clinics networks. Upon enrollment, each learner undergoes a streening and baseline assessment. The assessement is aimed at evaluating the learner's visual levels, prior schooling, braille readiness, auditory comprehension,and motor skills. This ensures that each child's individual learning needs are accurately understood from the onset.
Once assessed, the learners are provided with Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) that outline specific, measurable activities. For example, a goal may be for a student to read a centain number of braille words per minute or to independently identify money and tell time. ILPs are reassessed every three months to track progress and adjust learning goals as needed. These plans guide instruction and ensures that every child's unique learning needs are met.
The curriculum blends evidence-based literacy approaches adapted for visually impairments. Braille instruction, both contracted and uncontracted, forms the core of tactile literacy, While auditory-based phonics lessons develop phonological awareness. Large-print materials, high-contrast visual aids, and text-to-speech technology support learners with residual vision. Listening comprehension,vocabulary building, story retelling,and functional literacy tasks, such as reading timetables or forms are incorporated to ensure that learners can apply their skills in real-life context. Life skills and orintation sessions complement literacy lessons to support holistic development.
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