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ALL4WELL Accessible Language Learning for the Wellness Sector

The profession of a masseur is one of the most prestigious jobs for blind and visually impaired people. In some countries protective laws oblige public and private employers to employ blind masseurs. Due to the demographic development in Europe, wellness oriented applications offer increasing opportunities for masseurs and wellness professionals, especially within the tourism sector.For the blind masseur or wellness professional verbal interaction plays a significant role in the healing process, based on positive personal relationship. Being able to make oneself understood in the patient’s or tourist’s language - or in a common language - increases job opportunities and success in work. Therefore, for those desiring to work in the wellness sector there is an obvious demand for broader communicative skills, knowledge of foreign languages and intercultural skills, if they want to raise their employment prospects.However, blind or visually impaired people trying to learn a language, especially language for the job, find out that training centres are usually not prepared for visually impaired people. This is also very true for the field of blind and visually handicapped masseurs and wellness professionals where there is a perceptible shortage of suitable language training material. As a result, up to now foreign language training has been very marginal in a curriculum for visually impaired wellness professionals.This situation is challenged by a consortium of four institutions for blind and visually impaired that either organise training for masseurs and wellness professionals or provide this training in-house. These partners are supported by three language training centres that have experience in the creation and adaptation of existing language courses for visually impaired learners.Based on the results of the projects ELLVIS and VET4VIP, the project ALL4WELL (Accessible Language Learning for the Wellness Sector) provided a job-oriented English course in order to give an adequate answer to the needs of visually impaired masseurs and wellness professionals.The innovative user-interface of the course provides easy access to the content, thus broadening the possibilities of language teaching to the blind and visually impaired.

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