The Historical Development of the ECC and Why We Need It in Turkish Education System

Like every child, children with visual impairments have the right to access education and become fully independent individuals. However, vision is one of the most essential senses to access information. Therefore, children with visual impairments face significant challenges in accessing information and participate into educational activities. This leads to a number of barriers for people with visual impairments in becoming fully independent individuals in everyday life . The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of how vision influence children with visual impairments, how they should be educated and what they should be educated about. This discussion leads on a further discussion if an additional curriculum, apart from the national curriculum, is needed for students with visual impairments in Turkey. Therefore, an overview of important developments in creating the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) in the USA is provided. Moreover, this paper will give an overview of each ECC area and discuss why the ECC is crucial in education and everyday life of people with visual impairments in Turkey.