Editorial

Welcome to 2017 and the January issue of the BJVI. I cannot believe how fast the previous year went. For me, I found last year very interesting as I went to the United States of America (U.S.A.) several times not only for conferences but to examine how within the U.S.A. different states approach different service models of provision for pupils with visual impairment. I am hoping to bring back some of this knowledge and influence service delivery here in Scotland and hopefully wider in the UK.

Speaking of conferences there are two conferences happening that may be worth considering attending this year. The first of these is the Vision 2017 (http://www.vision2017.org/) conference held between the 25th – 29th June 2017 in The Hague – The Netherlands. This will be the 12^th International Conference by the International Society for Low Vision Research and Rehabilitation and my particular interest will be on the Tuesday where the focus will be more on children and neuroplasticity. Hopefully there will be an interesting seminar on childhood CVI.

The other conference that I am looking forward to in 2017 is the 9^th European Conference of ICEVI (http://www.icevi-bruges2017.be/European) to be held in Bruges shortly after the Vision 2017 conference July 2th to the 7^th. There will be 8 domains within the conference;

I have always found this conference very interesting with some excellent research and practice being done across Europe, I hope to see many of you at both of these conferences, if so please introduce yourself to me.

This issue starts with a very interesting piece of research by Walczak and Fryer, looking at audio description and contrasted a standard form of audio description with a more ‘creative’ form of description. 36 participants took part and the paper describes the adaptations to the audio description of the short film shown to the Polish participants. You will see how the main difference between the scripts (in describing the characters, their actions and scenes) had an effect on preference of choice between the two audio descriptions, particularly for male participants. There is more to come from this project and I look forward to seeing the second part.

From the U.S.A. Naylor and Labbe for our second paper looked at the effects of group therapy again using 36 adult participants (Mean age 48.2 years) that was a predominately an African American sample. Using the Calgary Symptoms of Stress Inventory as their main instrument, (something that I am now going to look at since this paper) coupled with a well-being Outcome Rating Scale, their results suggest that individuals need approximately 16 weeks of therapy intervention to experience significant reductions in their overall stress levels. What I liked about this paper, apart from the finding, was the choice of participant, where the majority reported having less than 20,000 U.S. dollars yearly income, half lived alone, and half required support from family and friends. We can immediately understand who Naylor and Labbe are describing and this group I feel is often left out in research for better outcomes for people with visual impairment, so I was really pleased to see this come in.

When looking through the back issues of the journal and noticing which papers have been the most cited and most read, papers that carry the theme of socio emotional support or competences are often near or at the top of the most read list. So when for our third paper by three German researchers, Lang, Hintermair and Sarimski, looked at the socio-emotional competences of very young children I thought this could be a very interesting paper indeed. 92 infants and toddlers with visual impairment aged between 12-36 months were used as their sample base for this study and the Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (a standard well known tool) with a newer Social-Emotional Assessment Evaluation Measure were used as their main instruments. Apart from an interesting finding that in itself both instruments demonstrated good reliability and valid information on social emotional competences of very young children, the really interesting finding for me was “the comparison of data with the data of a normative group with sighted toddlers reveals (when removing the children with additional impairments) that developing empathy and showing empathy to others, as well as connecting relations with other peers, seem to be the biggest challenge” (Lang, et al 2017). Yes, a very interesting piece of research indeed.

When attending meetings either with the Scottish Government or with Educationalists the topic of habilitation seems never far away. As such any research that explores the accessibility and quality of habilitation provision for children and young people with visual impairment, is one that I find is very much needed. Hogg and her colleagues in our fourth paper adopted a mix method approach to explore this very issue. Using case studies and surveys, their results revealed considerable variation in the accessibility and quality of habilitation training across the UK. Noting the obvious limitation of the study, that this study may not be fully representative of the UK, their results I feel still are extremely worrying in the sense that access to habilitation was not guaranteed across local authorities even if the child was registered with the local services, and/or even if it was mentioned in the child’s educational statement. The emphasis on daily living that is made in the paper is one that I wholly agree with and one that I have also written about in Ravenscroft 2013, and that this is often at best seen as a secondary after thought.

To whet your appetite for the forth coming special issue in May on Physical activity and sport for children with visual impairment, I have included this paper by Schipper, Lieberman and Moody that looks at the physical self-concept of children with visual impairment. Having had a PhD student (Samir Qasim) successfully pass his viva looking at the effect of Karate practice on self-esteem in young adults with visual impairment I have become much more familiar with physical self-concept and global self-esteem and so I read this paper with great enthusiasm, especially with the finding that participants in this study were happy and satisfied with their physical self. But just like the previous paper issues of inadequate training all play a role in the self-esteem of the child with visual impairment.

The final paper I think is the first in the journal from Iran. I need to check on this but it if is Excellent and welcome Iran to the BJVI and in particular Hashemi and colleagues. This paper considers a very important issue (not only to Iran but in every country) and that is the unmet need for refractive correction. In a large data sample of 4106 children the finding of the unmet need in children whose families were in the lower income quartile was 7.14 times the rate seen in children in the upper income is of real concern. And although this study is specific to Iran – it is of real immediacy that we get all children screened and that there should be no children at 7 with unknown and unmet refractive error.

I hope you enjoy this issue as much as I have putting it together and that you will enjoy the special editorship of Leiberman and Haegele for the May Special Issue.