Abstract
Welcome to 2019 and to the British Journal of Visual Impairment. I hope that we have had a very successful 2018 and that this New Year brings with it, new research, new funding opportunities, and new approaches to support children, young people, and adults with visual impairment (VI). Before we move onto to discuss this issue, I would like to bring to your attention that a new Handbook of Visual Impairment: Social and Cultural Research that will be published probably this March. It is edited by my good self and has 28 chapters provided by over 30 authors. The Handbook will be one of the largest and most wide-ranging books on VI that covers topics such as Cerebral Visual Impairment, Education, Habilitation and Mobility, Medical/Technical Ocular Advances, Older Adults, Physical Education, Deafblindness, Social Emotional Factors, and Assistive Technology. It has been a real pleasure putting the book together and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have compiling it.
Now that shameless plug is over, let us turn to the first paper in this issue, which examines the rehabilitation services among adults in Nigeria. The study adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach to interview adult users of rehabilitation services. It was very interesting to read what a positive effect services are having on adults who have lost their sight in Nigeria. In addition, I totally support the finding that the authors, Bassey, Ellison, and Walker recommend, such that the rehabilitation service would also benefit from the addition of a social module to support clients in building social confidence and communication as well as expanding a person’s social network. The paper therefore rightly highlights the importance of addressing the psych-emotional responses to vision loss and that an adoption of a programme that would effectively facilitate social well-being, and this would be a significant and welcome addition to rehabilitation services across Nigeria. Rehabilitation services everywhere take note.
We are aware of the importance of inclusive approaches in Education, and often in this journal, different curriculum areas become a particular focus. In this issue, we will focus on music education and the importance of music education for all pupils including those with VI. Yet we know that teachers supporting pupils in mainstream classes with both sighted and visually impaired students may have no specific training in supporting pupils with VI, no understanding of Braille music, and often lack the necessary preparation to fully include all pupils within their class. As such, Pino and Viladot’s paper tries to address some of the barriers to be overcome to develop successful teaching and learning strategies within mainstream music education. Of particular note within the paper was the identification of the relationships between the categories and sub-categories of teaching-learning resources and special support. I found Figure 2 very interesting and urge all to look at this and consider the collaborative approaches needed to support the pupil with VI in music education. I also agree with the findings that provision of support requires more than just a mastery of the discipline of the curriculum area but that specialised knowledge on how to support a pupil with VI is also necessary. An inclusive pedagogical approach is in my view not enough for we need the skills and training of a specialist-qualified teacher of pupils with visual impairment (QTVI) which is necessary to enhance the inclusive approach, where both the curriculum specialist and QTVI work together (with other professionals) to provide the optimal learning and teaching strategies for all pupils.
Building on the competences and knowledge of pre-service (initial teacher educators) general educators is a rather interesting paper by Ashby Jones, Rudinger, Williams, and Witcher which used a ‘Scavenger Hunt’ approach to develop participant (ITE mainstream teachers) knowledge of assistive technology. My immediate thought for this paper when it arrived into the British Journal of Visual Impairment (BJVI) system was that this should perhaps not be for the BJVI but should be for pre-service educator journals and other initial teacher education journals. However, I know how difficult it is to get anything related to VI into these journals and as such I felt that it was important to publish such an approach. Therefore, I ask those readers that are part of universities that have pre-service (ITE) programmes to share and disseminate this paper. It is extremely important to have assistive technology modules on ITE programmes, and perhaps the methodology described in this paper could be one way of introducing it without having to battle with the programme directors over time and curriculum allocation.
We know that physical education (PE) is important for pupils with VI; this has been widely reported in the literature and even as a special issue in the BJVI (Movement: an introduction to the special issue (2017). British Journal of Visual Impairment, 35(2), 83–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264619617705265); however, until now we believe that no previous research exists which examined the influence of school-based PE on physical activity for those with visual impairments in adulthood. This paper nicely addresses this and finds a common theme highlighting participants ineffectual PE experiences, showing beliefs that PE experiences had little impact on their current physical activity. The second finding reveals modifications the participants believed would have improved their PE experiences and so this is extremely useful, and finally a double-edge sword finding that those that were physically active in adulthood (great) attributed this to meaningful experiences outside of their respective school-based PE classes (again great but not so great for the school-based PE classes).
Jones, Bartlett, and Cooke highlight that the needs of people (adults) with VI are not being met within the United Kingdom. The activities of daily living, shopping online and in store, and cooking are still major obstacles for people with VI as identified through their 37-questionnaire survey. The study results show just how much sight loss affects the health of the individuals and of their own quality of life as measured by the Questionnaire of Vision-Related Quality of Life Measure. The authors end this paper with a callout to supermarkets to consider the ergonomics of their stores to take into account the needs of shoppers with VI and to stop moving produce (which I have to say really really annoys me too and I am sighted) to different locations in the store to tempt us to buy more, trying to find where they have put the item I seek. Hopefully, we get someone from the major chains to read this paper and to act seriously on their recommendations.
Our final paper by Mohanty, Venkataramanujam, Pradhan, and Hankey also relates to quality of live and PE except it examines the development and validation of a yoga module for children with VI. A yoga module was developed based on traditional and contemporary yoga literature and published studies with the objectives of determining needs of the participants. The validation was carried out with 25 experts over two rounds of iteration and feasibility of the practices evaluated on nine children with VI. It is very interesting to read that all experts thought the final module was technically easy to teach, and that the children reported 80% of satisfaction level with the yoga practices. I like this paper as it goes beyond just the spiritual nature of yoga but actually delivers a safe and well-accepted intervention for children with VI that could be used at school or within the community based on well-trained teachers.
As you will read through this issue, 2019 is starting with a wide variety of topics from all over the world, and I hope it has been as informative for you as it has for me.