Teiresias and the high schools
It is becoming clear that the Teiresias Centre cannot fulfill its task and meet its commitment to Masaryk University without maintaining contact with secondary schools (both special and integrated), which can then provide information in advance about the university's requirements for their disabled students. For this reason, the Teiresias Centre is a partner of organizations like Centres for Special Education in Prague, Brno and Hradec Králové, the TyfloCentres in Brno and Olomouc, and Tyfloservice. Where the Teiresias Centre differs from its partners is in providing for special skills in academic subjects such as mathematics, physics, Latin, geography, foreign languages and information science. The Teiresias Centre offers its partners and other schools and their students the same services it offers to the academic public, however to a varying degree. Some services are not limited (e.g. the library of electronic, tactile and voice texts), others are only limited by the Centre's capacity, taking into consideration that these services do not interfere with the Centre's commitments to Masaryk University.
Since 2001 the Centre has been entrusted with the printing of the tactile version of the state secondary school leaving exam for the blind, issued by the Institute for Information in Education (specifically CERMAT) in Prague. In cooperation with the firm Scio in Prague, the Centre also provides the National Comparative Exams for Students with Visual and Hearing Disabilities, especially for those preparing for the entrance exams to universities.
These students can also take part in another of the Centre's activities: the International Computer Camp for visually disabled secondary school students. The camp takes place thanks in part to financial support from the European Commission and under the auspices of Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. In 2001, the original national coordinator for the Czech Republic, the Secondary School for Visually Disabled Youth in Prague together with the Teresa Centre at the Czech Technical University in Prague, passed this role to the Teiresias Centre. The camps take place every year in a different country (Slovenia in 2001, Great Britain in 2002, Switzerland in 2003 and Hungary in 2004). The official language at the camps is English and the main goal is working with special software and hardware for the visually disabled.
Studying in the form of special courses, however, is not enough to cover all aspects of knowledge and this is particularly true when the question of extramural educational activities such as excursions or visiting exhibitions, is raised. Normally these are the students' individual responsibilities. Many university students accompanied by the Centre's representatives have visited the exhibition of the models of important public buildings in the collection of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Brno) and the exhibitions "From the Gothic to the Renaissance" (2000), and "Possible Messages" (2001) at the Moravian Gallery.
As a part of the University's life-long learning programme, the Teiresias Centre offers courses for people interested in university studies. These include Classical and modern languages (English, German, Russian, Latin and Greek), mathematics, as well as courses in information technology - all a focus on the respective disability, entrance examination requirements and academic work at the university. Thanks to cooperation with the Faculty of Information Science and the Institute for Information Technologies of Masaryk University, the choice of study programmes since the autumn of 2002 has been expanded to include courses offered by audio-conferencing. Selected universities and Centres (at the present only the Teiresias Centre at MU in Brno and the Teresa Centre at CVUT in Prague) provide an internet connection for live broadcasting of some courses, which allows the students' on-line participation in the courses. This removes the need to commute, which is, especially in case of visually disabled students, often very complicated and time consuming.
Česky