Summer 2015 Newsletter Page 6

Education Officer’s Message:

We greeted the summer with bright smiles and a renewed sense of purpose here at the Fredericton office. Although the warm sun and green scenes of summer are calling to us, we are hard at work preparing for another full year of ongoing projects and new initiatives.

This spring, we successfully launched the Barton tutoring sessions which just recently wrapped up at the end of June. Parents and students expressed much satisfaction with this new service and we are hoping that moving forward we will be able to offer Barton year-round. Registration for our fall Barton sessions beginning in September is already well-underway and spaces are being filling up fast! Over the summer months, we will be hard at work recruiting and training more qualified tutors for this specialized literacy service. With the generous donations of $3,000 from the Literacy Coalition and $10,000 from TD, we will be able to expand our services and continue to provide subsidies for low-income families who would otherwise not be able to access the service. If you are interested or know anyone who is interested in registering for Barton tutoring, please contact me at eo-dse@ldanb-taanb.ca or by phone at 506-459-7852.

As part of Disabilities Awareness Week, I had the pleasure of taking part in a two-day workshop on web accessibility hosted by the Joint Economic Development Initiative (JEDI) and UNB Libraries in collaboration with LDANB and the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training & Labour. Representing LDANB at this workshop, I had the opportunity to present on the various types of Learning Disabilities (LDs) and how LDs can be a barrier to web accessibility. Web accessibility is something that we often take for granted and this two-day workshop was very informative. Over the next few months, I hope to apply some of the valuable skills gained at this workshop and make the LDANB website more user-friendly and accessible to people with disabilities. Though you may notice some of these changes on our site, many of them will happen behind-the-scenes and may not be readily apparent. However, for someone with a disability who requires the use of assistive technology or who must navigate through the site using only a keyboard, these small changes may make a big difference in how the individual experiences and accesses the very important content of our website. For more information on web accessibility, please visit WebAim at : www.webaim.org.

One of our newest initiatives is a pilot project with the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour for the management of 150 psychoeducational assessments of PETL case-managed clients. Related to this initiative is another contract aimed at establishing standardized reporting and criteria for all PETL case-managed psychoeducational assessments. We look forward to this continuing this very important collaboration over the next year and hopefully beyond.

In June, LDANB happily welcomed a new Assistant Education Officer to its Fredericton team. Ashley Linden joined us on June 1st and has already proven herself to be a very helpful, efficient addition to our central office. Ashley will be working closely with me on the Barton program and Screening for Success as well as administrative duties.

Our office will remain open during the summer months, so please contact us if you require any information on our services or programs.

Wishing you a wonderful summer,

Natalie Bowley
Education Officer, LDANB

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