Abstract
Dear Colleagues
Welcome to the first edition of 2013.
I would like to bring your attention to the call for a Special Issue on ‘Visual Impairment & Aesthetics: Drafting the Constitution of a Sensory Democracy’. This call is for the January 2014 issue, and as you will see from the call paper, we invite contributions on the theme of visual impairment and aesthetics. It is intended that the Special Issue will provide a framework for a cross-disciplinary pooling of resources, ideas, and examples of good inclusive theory and practice, in order to foster dialogue between such diverse domains as medical humanities, literary theory, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, education, museum studies, disability and cultural studies, technology, architecture, technology and product design, art teaching and therapy, and media and performance art. I look forward to receiving the papers in due course.
In this issue, we have five very exciting articles, which interestingly enough focus on the main themes of support. In our first article, Hodge and her colleagues explored grieving process, and the emotional needs of people with visual impairments and how adaptation to the physical, emotional and social changes need to be seriously considered by all professionals.
One a similar note, Bergeron and Wanet-Defalque examined the adaptation of patients who have been diagnosed with visual impairment in Montreal. Seven hundred participants were recruited, and I was particularly interested in the finding that an early adaptation coping strategy appeared early in the grief process.
The core themes of disables self, namely; compensation, disclosure, stigma and passing, barriers disempowerment, and positive experiences identified in Atkinson and Hutchinson’s article, which looked at the process of transition from higher education to the National Health Service (United Kingdom) for visually impaired physiotherapists, were very interestingly explored. They used an interpretative methodology, which I am pleased to note. The findings of the article clearly show that we, in the United Kingdom, have a long way to go to remove both internal and external barriers.
We all like to dance, some of us dance better than others, but no matter how we dance, it does appear that dancing can be a way of reducing levels of depression and increasing well-being. By examining the Tango dance with participants with age-related macular degeneration, Pinninger and colleagues showed in a very nicely worked study just how effective this form of dance can be, and how readily it can be accepted.
Our fifth article written by Theodoru and Shipman explored the paediatric population attending a Low Vision Clinic. As many of you know, I have written before about how important I believe it is to fully understand the profile of people with visual impairments we are working with, and this article does exactly that. Furthermore, what is important in this understanding is this also constitutes important information for other key services such as education.
This edition also contains two book reviews: the first book co-written by Lea Hyvärinen and Namita Jacob, What and How Does this Child See?, is aimed as an important resource for the professionals working with children and young people with a sight loss. I had not read this particular book, but after reading the review, I now have it on order.
The second book is based on a topic that is fast becoming a very interesting one and that is the use of iPads. The book by Flo Longhorn is called iPads, Apps and Special Learners: A-Z for Beginners, a very handy and accessible practical book. I hope you will enjoy this issue, and once again a Happy New Year to you all.