The Support Centre for Student with Special Needs (Teiresias Centre)
Summary
The Support Centre for Student with Special Needs (Teiresias Centre) was established, after a short development within the Faculty of Informatics, in 2000, as one of the central bodies of Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.
Its primary task is to provide maximum accessibility to all accredited degree programmes for the blind and partially sighted, the deaf and partially hearing, people with limited or restricted mobility and people with other types of difficulties. Teiresias Centre became one of the biggest university centres for people with disabilities in Europe.
Approximately 100 blind and partially-sighted and more than 100 deaf/Deaf or hard-of-hearing students, which is more than a half of the sensorially disabled university students in the Czech Republic, are now included in the study programmes of Masaryk University, using the services of the Centre.
Target
- visually impaired, the deaf and hearing impaired, people with limited or restricted mobility and people with other types of disabilities
- academic community of Masaryk University and as a whole
- secondary schools (both special and integrated)
- the general public
Activities
Providing counselling, assistive, communication and mobility services as well as practical teaching, Teiresias Centre disposes of professional knowledge in the fields of special communication and accessibility, man-machine interaction, adaptive interfaces, special education, psychology, linguistics, sociology, social work, etc.
The Library and Publishing Section of the Teiresias Centre is among the primary braille and tactile producers in the country and it focuses, among other things, on electronic, tactile and hybrid books for the students of high schools and study documents needed during the transition from the secondary to the tertiary education.
