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September 1999
Sam Galbraith officially opens new premises of Scottish Sensory Centre and CALL Centre
On 2 September 1999, Sam Galbraith, Member of the Scottish Parliament and Minister for Children and Education, officially opened the new joint premises of the Scottish Sensory Centre (SSC) and the CALL Centre at the Holyrood campus of the University of Edinburgh.
The two centres, both primarily funded by the Scottish Office, have recently moved into co-location in new premises within the University’s new Faculty of Education. They have different service user groups and different ways of working, focusing on different areas of special educational needs, but they also share many approaches in common. The joint location offers a ‘one-stop’ resource of specialised information material and support for parents, teachers and other professionals, voluntary agencies, students, researchers and others.
The Minister was welcomed to the University by Vice-Principal Michael Anderson, Professor Gordon Kirk, Dean of the Faculty of Education and met Joint coordinators of CALL Centre, Sally Millar and Paul Nisbet, and Mary Brennan representing Marianna Buultjens, Coordinator of the SSC.
His first stop was a seminar for teachers on Special Access to Computers and Speech Recognition which dealt with alternatives to keyboard and mouse for pupils with physical disabilities and writing difficulties, as an example of CALL training events, which provide both awareness-raising and specialist in-depth courses in information and communication technology for special educational needs.
The Minister was accompanied on the first part of his tour by Jennifer Haddow, a Fife pupil who uses a Smart Wheelchair, developed by CALL, for children with severe and multiple disabilities who cannot use ordinary mobility aids; the award-winning Smart Wheelchair is now in commercial production.
 In the Technology Area, which highlighted both centres’ work with pupils and families, there was a display of communication aids and computer hardware and software. The equipment is used for assessment with individual pupils, and is available for loan to CALL service users for evaluation before purchase. The equipment includes systems for pupils who have difficulties with spoken communication, ranging from simple single message devices, to elaborate computer-based systems.
This included the ‘CALLTalk’ system, a speech and writing computer program for disabled children.
Also on show was the SSC Empowering project which is an accessible source of information on health, safety and sexuality for young people who are deaf or visually impaired. The project team works with deaf or visually impaired young people, including pupils from Donaldson’s College and the Royal Blind School to develop an offline website (on CD-ROM) which incorporates video and other image-based information suitable for deaf young people, as well as audio files and text suitable for blind computer access.
 The Minister met pupils using technology to access the 5-14 Curriculum and tried out equipment, including: specialised keyboards and pointing devices, and speech recognition programs; software for education and to support writing; portable computers; and special switches.
The Minister was briefed on the work of the Scottish National Support Service for visually impaired Children funded under the Innovation Fund for Children’s Services (NHS Executive), and supported by statutory and voluntary bodies from Health, Education and Social Work. The Service is to set up a voluntary register of disability and service provision, to identify the met and unmet needs of children with VI, to enable the collection of epidemiological data, to provide up-to-date information on ophthalmological data, and to provide a focus for education and training.
In the SSC and CALL libraries, an example of the centres’ work with professionals and schools, the Minister saw an extensive collection of specialist books and multimedia materials on the education and personal development of people with sensory,or communication impairments.He viewed the Sensory Information Service comprises a fully searchable database and a collection of online resources for those who are concerned with people who are deaf or visually impaired, and the CALL web site, currently being redesigned in line with the needs of the Scottish educational community and the National Grid for Learning.
Finally,the Minister viewed examples of the research and development activities of both centres, including the SSC’s development of an Audiology Training package and research on Sign Linguistics; the CALL Centre Smart Wheelchair, the CALLTalk communication and learning program, and the Special Access to Interactive Literacy (SAIL) kit. Many of these resources were developed with funding from the Scottish Office.
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