The centre is the only establishment of its kind in the country. It provides blind and severely visually impaired people with residential blindness skills courses and the follow-up training and/or retraining for various jobs. The centre was founded by Czech Blind & Partially-Sighted Union with financial and material support of the Ministry of Labour & Social Affairs, City Council of Prague, and a Dutch foundation Care for the Czech Republic. It is now administered by the Union's successor, Czech Blind United. Courses are conducted either on one-to-one basis or in small client groups. Our essential aim is to enable a maximum number of blind people to keep their current jobs or to acquire new ones. Therefore, we focus on working age population (from 16 years).

Who is eligible:

a) A person who, during his/her working age, has lost his/her original job as a result of the loss and/or severe impairment of his/her vision;

b) a person with a long-term severe visual impairment who had performed his/her job thanks to special adaptations, has lost it, and now endeavors to find a new one;

c) a severely visually-impaired juvenile who studied and/or was trained in a special school or college, but could not find a job according to his/her qualifications;

d) a blind person with another impairment (mental or physical)who can reasonably be expected to live independently and make a living after rehabilitation and training to perform a simple manual activity.

 Blindness skills programme includes the following courses:

• orientation and mobility training with the long cane;
• reading and writing Braille;
• functional vision and other sensory training;
• physical fitness;
• social communication;
• typing;
• electronic adaptive equipment training;
• tactile training in ergo therapeutic workshops.

Training/retraining courses are organized as individually planned programmes that are tailored with maximum consideration for client abilities on the one hand and for prospective employer requirements on the other. The courses are designed for visually-impaired persons registered as unemployed with their respective local Labour Offices. Training/retraining is commissioned on a contractual basis - usually by Labour Offices, sometimes by employers or sponsors.

Here follows the list of training programmes and their duration

•  switchboard operator (5 months);
• physiotherapy-masseur: medical worker, lower category (5 months);
• ceramics craft (2 months);
• basketwork (4 months);
• basics of personal computer work (1 month);
• MS-DOS applications (6 weeks);
• Windows (5 weeks).

Each year we strive to locate and run a new suitable training scheme. For most of our courses we have accreditation from the Education Ministry (the physiotherapy programme being accredited by the Health Ministry); successful graduates are duly certified with diplomas of national validity.

Programmes for the blind with additional impairments:

These persons are mostly trained in simple manual activities that are designed to be performed in sheltered settings. The training itself takes place in our workshop where future job environment is being simulated.

We consider the rehabilitation and training process as successful only when it is crowned with a job for the graduate. To achieve this, the Centre collaborates closely with both Labour Offices and prospective employers. We provide counselling in the following fields: establishing a work place for a visually-impaired individual; purchase of adaptive equipment; elimination of architectural barriers; creating feasible work descriptions, tax deductions, social matters, etc.

Thanks to our Centre, blind people are not on their own when looking for a job or training to get one. We aim to assist the blind in their meaningful integration into the community. We look forward to your visit and are ready to help solve your job-related problems.