ABSTRACT
The study of history and geography presents specific challenges to children with a visual impairment. Most children arrive at school with some awareness of the historical past derived from incidental exposure to visual media such as paintings, photographs, television and architecture, but it cannot be taken for granted that children with a severe visual impairment will have had the same opportunity for incidental learning. Similarly, the sense of the structure and scale of the physical environment, which children who are fully sighted gain immediately from a glimpse of a distant range of hills or a river valley, may be slow to develop in children with little or no sight. This chapter seeks to offer practical suggestions as to ways in which access to the themes set out in the National Curriculum programmes for geography and history (DfE 1995a) can be achieved by children with a visual impairment.
