10 New Technologies in Teaching Interpreting to Students with Visual Impairments

Although there have been some successful blind students of interpreting, virtually no attention has been devoted to their training and the methods they use to develop their interpreting skills. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with blind interpreters from Poland, the author suggests how to tackle some of the barriers that blind interpreters may encounter. Since the sample is age-diverse, the paper contains an overview of methods and technologies used by blind interpreting students over the past few decades. The main section of the paper is devoted to the discussion of some of the challenges experienced by blind students of both consecutive and simultaneous interpreting. Those challenges include spatial orientation, use of preparatory materials, and visual aids. In particular, the issue of note-taking in consecutive is addressed by presenting some of the available solutions elaborated by the blind themselves, including the one devised by the author. The author also discusses his experiences as a blind teacher of interpreting.