New trust fund to help blind people

Press, 19 December 1989, Page 32

New trust fund to help blind people

PA Wellington Blind or visually impaired students can now get financial help from a trust fund set up by a blind American law professor who has retired to New Zealand. Dr Leonard Oppenheim and his wife Virginia, who live at Waikanae, have set up the Oppenheim Trust with $30,000, to mark their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind has added a further $30,000 and Radio ZMFM in Wellington has added $6OO. The trust will help sight-disabled students at tertiary institutions buy technical equipment such as talking-book readers or closed-circuit television magnifiers. Dr Oppenheim has been blind for almost 20 years. As a professor of law at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he taught for nearly four decades, he noticed many handi-

capped students struggling to succeed. “Visually impaired people face frustration and the realisation that they have got to work twice as hard to achieve the same things as fully sighted people,” he said. “It can be done if you have the right equipment.” The blind foundation’s board of trustees chairman, Mr Don McKenzie, said, “Statistics tell us that only 40 per cent of visually impaired people of working age are actually employed, many in lowpaying jobs. Access to education is a key to equalling their chances. “Mainstream education provides for primary and secondary students who have special needs. But there is no specialist provision in the tertiary sector for additional assistance.” Mr McKenzie said blind people were denied access to some courses because institutions felt ill-

equipped to cope with them. “Blind people in New Zealand have not been able to get into teacher training college. Overseas, particularly in the United States, teaching is quite a rewarding occupation for blind people.” Mr McKenzie said he hoped the assistance offered by the trust would encourage universities and polytechnics to think more creatively about taking on visually impaired people.