today I did the obvious, and googled adapting games for blind children...
voila, an article

Games for Blind Kids

by Laura Weber

  from the Texas parents of blind children, a site I had never been to before, and so now I have lots of lovely hints and links to follow, including off to my favourite journal - Future Reflections to find Adapting Games for Blind Children by Katrilla Martin. Just some simple ideas, and some pointers to what might be available commercially through blind resource suppliers.

For a slightly more detailed story, also in Future Reflections, this time from Merry-Noel Chamberlain
She has a long list of commercially available items, many which you can use without any adaptation, but then she goes on to detail what minor (eg adding some braille) or other ways of adapting games to make them accessible. 

 I need to review it to see what I will do next, I'm thinking of adapting some playing cards.  We have some with braille, but they still feel much too abstract and hard work, so I may add some 'children's earring stickers'...see how I go

I've just gone to SensorySun's website, lots of good stuff, including a 'christmas catalogue' of sorts which shows lots of toys that may be accessible to blind or visually impaired children.  worth a look for inspiration, whtether its for christmas, birthday, or a few schoolie type items.

another creative adapter shows her colours

following the trail of creativity, I have found Hillary Welch Kleck at Sensory Sun, who shows a few of her own game adaptations, though I must say that the photos didn't come up for me. 

I found it, the original story about adapting Candyland, this time written by a mum, here is the link http://whistlererin.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/textures.html.  I havea attempted my own game adaptation, this time for 'Trouble', I'll try and attach a photo as soon as I work out the technology

adapting games for VIP kids

a while back I came across somebodies story of how they had adapted a game common in the States, Candyland, for their vision impaired child.  I really liked it and thought it would be great to share more details of how people adapt games for their kids.  I haven't found that story yet, but did come across this post on an educator's website about how to adapt games for children with vision impairment.  So here is my first step towards sharing the candyland game adaptation.  I'll keep searching

getting brailler kid friendly for kinder

Today R and I had an appointment with his new kindergarten teacher.  So we decided to decorate his brailler, which will be at kinder for him to use there.  As you can see it is a very industrial looking machine, quite alien amongst modern technology.  Not that this bothers R, but I thought it might be good if it looked a little more kid friendly so that other kids weren't freaked out by it.  We had fun anyway.

 

Braille at a glance

just thought that a little bit of braille info might be a good place to start:
here is a place to see what the braille alphabet looks like, and here is a place to go to to learn more about Unified English Braille code, which is currently used in only about 5 countrys, including Australia (2005 - 2010), New Zealand, and Canada, UK (2011) and Nigeria but is about to be adopted (slowly) (but not fully) by the US.  This is useful to know because it means that any books purchased from the US are likely to be in a slightly different braille code to what R is learning.