Services for Students
Camp Helen Keller
Camp Helen Keller is a six-week summer day camp for children ages 4 to 15 who are blind or visually impaired. Located on the grounds of Farmingdale State College in Long Island, the camp includes activities designed to improve children’s self-esteem, self-confidence, and socialization skills. Activities include indoor swimming, water and field games, arts and crafts, music and dance, adaptive computer instruction, and a variety of age-appropriate field trips. The camp is staffed by professionals in rehabilitation and education. There is a nurse or campus health center care in place for the campers, and the counselor to camp ratio is 3:1.
Camp Helen Keller is open to eligible children from Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The camp provides door-to-door transportation for campers in Nassau and West and Central Suffolk counties. Registration begins April 1 of each year.
The Louis Anzalone Braille Center
Since 1952, Helen Keller Services for the Blind’s Braille Center has transcribed, manufactured, and provided Braille and large-print textbooks, handouts, and novels to New York State children, grades K through 12, who are blind or visually impaired.
The Louis Anzalone Braille Center houses more than 10,000 titles in subjects such as English, foreign languages, sciences, higher mathematics, history, health, technology, economics, music, and art. The Center produces an average of 200,000 pages of Braille and large-print annually.
Children’s Saturday Program
The HKSB Children’s Saturday Program is an eight-session spring and fall program for children ages 8 to 13 years old who are blind or visually impaired. The Children’s Saturday Program improves the self-esteem, self-confidence, and social ability of participants through an array of recreational and educational activities facilitated by our rehabilitation professionals. Located at the HKSB Huntington facility, the program includes activities such as field trips, social skill-building exercises, computer training, and instruction in daily living skills and safe travel skills.
Pre-Vocational Training
Pre-vocational training for teens is a two-month training program that prepares visually impaired and blind teenagers (ages 14 to 21) for the world of work.
Sessions include evenings (pizza, soda, and snacks are provided) and two field trips. Activities and topics covered include career options, preparing a resume, going on an interview, social dos and don’ts, and finding a job. Field trips to work sites are included to provide participants with exposure to different careers and job settings. Past field trips have included visits to WPLJ Radio Station, New York City; the Supreme Court in Queens; Brookhaven National Laboratory—National Weather Service; and Anton Publishing in Mineola. Participants from previous programs have gone on to such positions as intern for a New York State Senator, junior press secretary for a New York State Assemblyman, veterinary assistant, and retail associate at Old Navy & Gap.
College Prep Program
The College Prep Program is a program aimed at high school students (10th through 12th grade) with visual impairments who are considering post-high school options. Classes are given year round, summer, and holidays from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm (time is individualized depending upon the student).
The College Prep Program gives clients instruction in the following areas:
Personal growth & values
- Life management
- Learning styles
- Personal and educational values
- Maintaining health and reducing college stress
- Time management and organizational skills
- Creative and visual thinking
- Critical analysis and problem solving
- Setting academic goals
- Learning to learn
- Working with readers and scribes
Academic information & strategies
- College (offices, departments, services for the disabled student)
- Instructor/student relations
- Assertive and passive classroom behaviors
- Class work, materials, textbooks, modalities
- Reading and writing assignments
- Note-taking principles, strategies, and techniques
- Studying
- Exam- and test-taking techniques
- Research and writing
- Oral presentations
