International scientific and practical seminar "Accessible art therapy for people with hearing and vision disabilities" was held on April 4 in ISTR. The representatives of the "Со-единение" Foundation and foreign colleagues from Italy and France took part in the event. The seminar discussed the issues related to the social, psychological, technical aspects of art therapeutic technologies for people with hearing and vision disabilities.
The seminar participants listened to Andrey Demchinsky, Candidate of Medical Sciences who spoke about bionic visual implants, Dominique Arshambo’s report (The University of Paris VIII) on tactile books with software support, and Silvio Pagliara’s presentation (Italian University of Sport and Movement "Foro Italico") on new information and communication assistive technologies.
The participants discussed the issues related to effective socio-cultural technologies that provide a comfortable existence in educational institutions to people with hearing and visual disabilities. Does the University need an inclusive theater? How to use ceramics workshop, art studio, vocal studio? How to make art technologies effective, upgrade them, connect them with digital technologies? The exchange of experience allowed teachers and staff of ISTR and technical faculties of NETI to set new tasks in the field of social, information and engineering assistive technologies integration.