Introduction The present study assesses the performance of students who are visually impaired (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) in braille reading accuracy and examines potential correlations among the error categories on the basis of gender, age at loss of vision, and level of education. Methods Twenty-one visually impaired Greek school-aged children participated in the present study. The students who participated were enrolled in different educational settings; that is, special schools and mainstream educational settings. The research tool was a subset (three subscales) of a standardized instrument (Test A, Padeliadu & Antoniou, 2008) that evaluates reading accuracy in Greek. All interactions between researchers and students were videotaped, and the analysis of the obtained data was focused on phonological and nonphonological-type errors. Results Significant differences in performance were found between male and female participants— t(19) = 2.12, p < .05—as well as between students who attained primary and secondary education: t(19) = 1.96, p ≊ .05. The average number of errors in the three subscales correlated very highly, signifying that performance was very similar. Positive correlation was found between replacement and subtraction types of error ( p < .05), and replacement and recognition ( p < .001), and the total number of errors was positively correlated with replacement ( p < .001), subtraction ( p = .001), and recognition errors ( p < .001). Male participants made more replacement errors: t(19) = 2.09, p ≊ .05; participants in secondary education made significantly fewer errors of recognition: t(19) = 2.49, p < .05; and students who were congenitally blind made significantly more errors of addition: t(19) = 1.96, p ≊ .05. Regarding the recognition type of error, there was a significant interaction effect between grade and age at loss of vision: F(3/17) = 3.09, p = .05. Discussion Participants did not benefit exceptionally from semantic information, and it is unclear whether a higher school level leads to the improvement of braille reading accuracy. “Reading the entire word” seems the most effective decoding strategy. Nevertheless, further research is needed to obtain relevant data from longitudinal studies. Implications for practitioners Listing and analyzing braille reading errors systematically may reveal error patterns. Based on these patterns, teachers would be able to differentiate their instruction to improve students’ performances in braille speed and accuracy.

People with vision impairment and multiple disabilities (MDVI) constitute a population with an enormous heterogeneity due to the combination of various disabilities. Education of children with MDVI concerns different domains and it is considered one of the most demanding fields in Special Education as each student with MDVI has different needs and entails unique educational challenges. In specific, the development of communication skills of children with MDVI is a fundamental domain of their education which affects their learning and active participation in all sectors of life. As a result, professionals are very concerned in which way they can design and develop effective intervention programmes, in order to assess accurately children's communication levels and in turn set realistic goals to consolidate and advance them. The present paper refers to an Erasmus+ project entitled "Promoting effective communication for Individuals with a Vision Impairment and Multiple Disabilities" (PrECIVIM) which acknowledges the need to train teachers in this field and bridges assessment and intervention for the development of communication skills for children with MDVI. The authors present and describe in this paper the following: a. the structure and the content of a training manual for the enhancement of teachers' and professionals' competences in communication skills of children with MDVI, and b. the training process, based on the developed training manual, in three countries (Greece, Cyprus and Romania) in different educational settings for children with MDVI. The obtained data regarding teachers' and professionals' feedback from the training process and their corresponding intervention programmes, revealed a range of good practices as well as concerns and challenges confirming the need of more focused training programmes regarding the education of children with MDVI. The authors conclude that the implementation of intervention programmes, when it comes to communication and levels of communication, depends significantly by a number of factors such as diagnosis, early intervention, system of support for professionals and families, assessment, teachers and professionals' competences, effective use of technology, alternative and augmentative communication, environment, and so on. Finally, it is argued that the aforementioned issues, should be an integral part of a systematic educational policy for the provision of educational opportunities in terms of equality and inclusion for all children including children with MDVI.

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Abstract. This paper reports on the results from a series of psychoacoustic experiments in the field of the auditory representation of texts via synthetic speech which comprise similar acoustic patterns so called "paronyms". The errors which occur when listening to paronyms are classified as errors of phonological type. Thirty blind and thirty sighted students participated in psychoacoustic experiments. The results from the experiments depicted the types of the subjects' errors and addressed comparisons between the performances of blind and sighted students on their auditory distinctions towards the chosen scripts (paronym words and sentences with paronyms). The discussion considered the practical implications of the findings such as issues regarding education as well as the development of suitable design of acoustic rendition of texts in favor of better perception and comprehension.