Definitions

Visual Impairment

Visual impairment describes the condition of a person’s eye sight when they have loss of vision such that requires them to need assistance because their vision is not functional.  It is most often caused by eye problems that have gone uncorrected. In most cases untreated nearsightedness (myopia), far sightedness (hyperopia) or astigmatism can end up in moderate to severe visual impairment, or low vision. Cataracts and glaucoma can also lead to visual impairment.

The World Health Organization (WHO) lists some key facts regarding global visual impairment:

• 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 have low vision
• About 90% of the world's visually impaired live in developing countries
• Globally, uncorrected refracted errors are the main cause of visual impairment; cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness in middle and low-income countries
• The number of people visually impaired from infectious diseases has greatly reduced in the last 20 years
• 80% of all visual impairment can be avoided or cured
  From (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/).

In terms of this assignment it is of particular interest that 90% of visual impairments occur in developing countries. When thinking about low/mid/high assistive technologies, residents of these developing countries would likely have access to assistive technology on the low tech end of the scale.

Food for thought: Education for visually impaired students in developing countries

 

Blind

There seems to be a lot of discussion in the realm of health regarding the definition of blind. We discovered that some argue that the term “blind” is a label that doesn’t apply to anybody, that it is a social construction because everybody can “see” in some way.   Other organizations, such as the WHO and the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) seem to agree that the term refers to the degree to which an individual can see light – which means that there are varying degrees of blindness.  In terms of being labelled legally blind most agree that this occurs when an individual can only see within 20 feet or less in front of them, their peripheral vision is also considered.  The Iowa Department for the Bind defines functional blindness as when a person “has to use so many alternative techniques to perform tasks that are ordinarily performed with sight that his/her pattern of daily living is substantially altered.” However, we would argue that many tasks that are “ordinarily” performed are performed under social constructions that are set up for individuals who perform in “normal” ways, and can you really define “normal”?

Living with visual impairment/blindness: