Abstract
Welcome to the final issue of 2019, it is quite remarkable how fast the year goes. As many of you are aware, it does appear to be conference season time, with conferences that I am aware of in Europe, Canada, the United States, and Australia. I hope those who are presenting will consider publishing their results in the British Journal of Visual Impairment (BJVI) to ensure as wide dissemination to the field as possible as those authors have done so in this issue.
While I was hosting a conference supported by the Scottish Sensory Centre, the inaugural symposium of International Society for Physical Activity and Individuals With Visual Impairments or Deafblindness (http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/courses/vi&multi/vconf19.html), I was approached by Dr Giese who outlined the problem he was facing as a German speaker. I was very interested in his argument that he felt the social and the pedagogical fields regarding visual impairment exist in parallel with German-speaking researchers without a systematic exchange with English-speaking researchers. This clearly as he describes is ‘not profitable for all’ and as such I have invited him to be a guest editor of the BJVI to support greater collaboration and to give opportunity for this exchange to occur. As such please see the call for a special issue below.