Abstract
Welcome to the second issue of the British Journal of Visual Impairment (BJVI) for 2015.
We, as you have come to expect now, have an international feel to the issue with a range of researchers and academics coming from a series of different countries all pushing forward a research agenda to build upon existing knowledge. An issue that has had a lot of attention in Europe and further afield is the relationship that Braille has with new technologies. Certainly, this journal is not unaccustomed to this debate, but with more advances in mobile technologies, this relationship is coming under closer scrutiny. Indeed, I aim to publish, over the forthcoming issues, papers that take a closer look at this debate, so would welcome any research looking at this. But before we start to get into this debate, I found the first paper in this issue by Graven, who looked at how people who are blind discriminate Braille characters, very interesting. Along with 23 blind participants, he identified three discrimination strategies that are used when accessing Braille, and indeed, it seems discrimination strategies are not static. They are constantly being developed and fine-tuned over time and experience. What Graven in his paper really raised for me was the pedagogy of teaching Braille. Although there are many courses across Europe, Australia, and America that teach students who are studying to become qualified teachers of pupils with visual impairment, how many of these courses focus on the pedagogy of teaching Braille, and not just the process of learning Braille itself. Braille is still an important medium and while we learn Braille ourselves as tutors and teachers, it is a different thing entirely to teach it to other students. Do we have enough expert teachers of Braille (and its associated codes) I wonder? Understanding the strategies of how blind students learn Braille is certainly one way of increasing the pedagogical knowledge and therefore I hope you find this paper as interesting as I do.
Taking us away from the classroom but outside to focus on mobility within shared spaces is the focus of the second paper in this issue by Havik and colleagues. As Havik details, shared space is a concept that comprises the design and planning process of a public space. It is a concept that more and more designers are using to create public environments. The aim of shared space design is to combine all functions of a public area and to create environments that should stimulate all users to act responsibly. So compared to traditional designed spaces, how well do people with vision impairment cope in these new shared space designs? With a series of very interesting designs and controls which I encourage you all to read, the paper highlights that the walking speed of people with visual impairment in shared space design is slower than in more traditional public designed spaces. As Havik says, the design is to slow everything down so it appears that this also applies to the mobility of people with low vision or who are blind. Interestingly enough, those using a guide dog encountered the most difficulties in the Shared-Space study (and although as Havik notes the numbers in this study with guide dogs are low); the absence of the regular cues such as kerbs seems to confuse both the dogs and their owners. Clearly, further research needs to be done on this, but I would have thought this has significant implications on the training of habilitation workers needing now to consider the development of shared space design without the absence of traditional cues and the mobility of people within these environmental designs.
Moving to another theme, our third paper by Metell provides us with an exploratory study on music therapy and early interaction with children with visual impairment and their sighted caregivers. For those teachers who work with children with visual impairment and severe complex needs, we know that music can play an important role, ranging from signifiers of transition to calming and exciting pupils. However, the focus of Metell’s paper is how musical interaction can contribute to enhancing bonding and early interaction in order to develop a greater sense of well-being. The qualitative comments and observations do seem to suggest that informed music therapy can promote positive bonding patterns and enhance early interaction for young children with visual impairment by providing experiences of togetherness, joint attention, and happiness.
Those like me who teach in higher education institutions have seen the change in the way we now offer instruction. We have the “flipped classroom” blended approaches, and above all, there has been a significant rise in distance learning courses. One university in the United Kingdom has specialized in distance learning since 1969, and that is the Open University. So when Richardson submitted his paper examining the academic attainment in visually impaired students in distance education (from the Open University), I read this with great interest as this directly relates to my work as the Deputy Head of the Moray House School of Education. As you will see from the results of this study, we do need to re-examine and make sure that we meet the need of perhaps a new and diverse cohort that are attending our higher education institutions. I thank the author for this alert, and I urge you all to take heed to the call that Richardson makes at the end of the paper.
Sex education for pupils with visual impairment is a topic that I feel has been sadly neglected in the BJVI; however, the paper by Kelly and colleagues begins to address this, for they examined the sex education school experiences of 28 adults who attended a variety of education institutions. Although they found that those students who attended a residential setting had slightly more sex education than those students who went to their local school, there was overall a lack of role plays, explicit talk, tactile graphics, electronic materials, or anatomically correct models used by the participants in their sex education experiences, something that again we may have to address in the courses that universities offer to students who want to be qualified teachers of pupils with visual impairment.
As we know, it is becoming more and more important that we can evidence and impact our work. This evidencing of our service has many of us taxed, what is an appropriate tool to evaluate our service is a common question that is asked and so when Thomas and colleagues submitted a paper titled “Multisource Evaluation of Multidisciplinary Low-Vision Services for Children and Young People,” I was immediately searching for the section on how they developed the tools. You will see in the paper how a range of tools was developed and used for parents and families, including separate tools for children and young people, as well as tools for parents. With the tools developed, Rachel went about evaluating their low-vision service. I shall let you read the outcome of the paper; however, I would be particularly interested if anyone takes up his or her request for the tool to be evaluated at multiple sites across the United Kingdom (or even further afield if relevant), as findings are based on two sites only.
Once again I thank the authors for the time and dedication in their work and for thinking of publishing their work in the BJVI.