The Routledge Handbook of Visual Impairment

Social and Cultural Research

John Ravenscroft, John Ravenscroft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351618793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Disabilities in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Routledge Handbook of Visual Impairment examines current debates as well as cross-examining traditionally held beliefs around visual impairment. It provides a bridge between medical practice and social and cultural research drawing on authentic investigations.

It is the intention of this Handbook to provide an opportunity to engage with academic researchers who wish to ensure a coherent and rigorous approach to research construction and reflection on visual impairment that is in collaboration with, but sometimes is beyond, the medical realm.

This Handbook is divided into ten thematic areas in order to represent the wide range of debates and concepts within visual impairment. The ten themes include:

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• cerebral visual impairment;

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• education;

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• sport and physical exercise;

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• assistive technology;

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• understanding the cultural aesthetics;

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• socio-emotional and sexual aspects of visual impairment;

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• orientation, mobility, habitation, and rehabilitation;

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• recent advances in "eye" research and sensory substitution devices;

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• ageing and adulthood.

The 27 chapters that explore the social and cultural aspects of visual impairment can be taken and used in a variety of different ways in order to promote research and generate debate among practitioners and scholars who wish to use this resource to inform their practice in supporting and developing positive outcomes for all.

1

Introduction and synthesis of themes

The editor’s perspective

John Ravenscroft

Introduction

Books on visual impairment,¹ with a particular focus on social and cultural factors, have not proliferated the academic arena as have more traditional medical notions of visual impairment, However, as a journal editor where I constantly review journal publications, chapters and conference proceedings in visual impairment, I have noticed that there has been a significant development and even a consolidation of practice for the last five years. As such, I have felt the time has come to distil the research and explore these exciting international avenues of practice.

This new Handbook of visual impairment was put together with the aim of examining current debates as well as cross-examining traditionally held beliefs around visual impairment. This book aims to provide a bridge between medical practice and social and cultural research drawing on authentic investigations. It is the intention of the Handbook to provide an opportunity to engage with academic researchers who wish to ensure a coherent and rigorous approach to research construction and reflection on visual impairment that is in collaboration with but sometimes beyond the medical realm.

If research is to have meaning and value, it is hoped that this text will enable the researcher to make informed choices and sound decisions about research direction and design, by demonstrating complex ideas and theoretical framing needed to underpin more advanced research in visual impairment. It is, therefore, one of the main objectives in putting this Handbook together to provide insights into the ways in which this foundational knowledge of research and research processes can then be applied in order to build further coherent, relevant and rigorous outcomes for people with visual impairment.

Some medical and pedagogical challenges within visual impairment have been stale in moving on from traditional beliefs in that visual impairment should only be the focus of optical eye damage, that is, visual impairment is a result of damage or functional limitation of the eyes. However, in the past decade we now know that this is not the case and that, particularly in children, in developed economic countries visual impairment is due mainly to damage or functional limitation of the brain (Kong et al., 2012). This book will reflect this changing view of visual impairment and all the authors that have contributed to this Handbook fully understand this relationship between the eye and the brain.

Contributors to the Handbook provide an international perspective, with contributions coming from Canada, America, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Australia, Finland, Greece and New Zealand. The editor does note that one of the shortcomings of the book is the limitation of space and at least a doubling of contributions could have been included, thus indicating the revised research interest of areas identified in the book. The Handbook is therefore not meant to be exhaustive, but rather it is a collection of chapters that each of the authors have provided to illustrate and highlight with numerous examples how positive and successful outcomes for people with visual impairment can best be achieved.

The Handbook is divided into ten parts, each covering different thematic areas in order to represent the wide range of debates and concepts within visual impairment, in a structure that hopefully continuously builds and interlinks with each other. Note though, there were countless ways in which this book could have been thematically assembled but the editor’s decisions to construct the book was driven by the complexity of the topic as well as a ride range of theoretical positions and conceptual arguments relating to social and cultural outcomes for people with visual impairment. These drivers reflect the changing research landscape within visual impairment and taken together hopefully has resulted in a new collection that provides a comprehensive, high-level review of debate and research that has intrinsic value but also can provide the catalyst for further research.

The ten themes within the book explore our recent understanding and representation of how people with visual impairment explore and interact with the world as well as focus on aspects of technology that have recently come to the forefront of assisting people of all ages with visual impairment. In addition the Handbook examines the important role of education and career education while also looking at the socio-emotional aspects of visual impairment and ends with a discussion of aging and adulthood.

The first theme of the book in Part I aims to identify and understand the profile, sociological and psychological impact of visual impairment explores. In Chapter 2, Keeffe presents some interesting data from the 2015 Global Burden of Disease publications and shows there has been a decrease in the prevalence of both vision impairment and blindness but an increase in the numbers of people with vision loss, which generally can be put down to the increase in life expectancy, in most countries. Chapter 2 is therefore also linked to the final theme in Part X and the last two chapters on aging and adulthood (Chapters 26 and 27). The third chapter within this initial theme explores the importance of the visual experience for cognitive processes, with a particular focus on perception of the environment. In other words, it provides us with an understanding from a psychological and neuroscience perspective on how people with no vision “see” the world. Fielder and Proulx’s chapter (Chapter 3) links to Hayhoe’s chapter (Chapter 15) in Part VI on understanding the cultural aesthetics, as well as Siu’s chapter (Chapter 14) in Part V on assistive technology. In order for us to perhaps begin to understand the sociological impact of being blind, a personal account is necessary. Kapperman’s own narrative of “On being blind” (Chapter 4) provides us with a very open and honest account of what it is like growing up as a person with visual impairment in the United States. He outlines some of the expected and not so expected challenges throughout his life and how he has overcome these challenges, particularly as he transitioned into college and university life.

Part I provides us with this general overview of a social and cultural perspective, and an understanding of the nature of representation of people with visual impairments. We know that “seeing” the world might be different for those with visual impairments compared to those with vision, but that their perception is just as rich and varied (Fielder and Proulx, Chapter 3 this volume).

The concept of trying to understand the unique individual world we each occupy, and how, where and why it is different from others, is key to understanding how, where, when and what support and accommodations need to be made with people with visual impairment is continued in the next three chapters in Part II, amalgamated under the second theme of cerebral visual impairment (CVI). It is important to always remember when reading these three chapters that CVI is not a single diagnosis, for it has commonly become known as an umbrella term for “all types of visual impairment due to brain damage or dysfunction” (Chokron and Dutton, 2016). Dutton and Bauer’s chapter (Chapter 5) provides our first introduction to CVI and reinforces how vision is created by the brain and that this creation is unique to every individual and that “we must never use our own perceptions, to guide our educational approach to children with CVI, we must always use theirs” (Dutton and Bauer, Chapter 5 this volume). It is interesting to compare the next chapter by McDowell (Chapter 6), who provides us with another personal account of being visually impaired, but instead of describing life with an ocular impairment as Kapperman does (Chapter 4), McDowell explains how living with CVI has equally affected her quality of life. It is worth reading these two chapters side by side and noting the similarities and differences.

By Chapter 7 I hope the objective of understanding how the concept of individual representation of vision loss has been successfully messaged. An additional way of examining this is through having an understanding of how the assessment of visual processing functions and disorders occurs and this is exactly what Hyvärinen highlights (Chapter 7). The three case studies in this chapter show why acuity is not the determining factor for a child’s visual function and that a thorough and detailed assessment process needs to be conducted to identify each individual’s level of functioning. Hyvärinen rightly informs us in the chapter that visual acuity values should not be used to limit educational or medical services for students with visual processing disorders . . . each student’s functioning, participation and environment should be thoroughly assessed to find the strengths and weaknesses of functions and available compensatory strategies.

This is, in part, why I have not started this introduction to the Handbook with the more traditional opening of trying to define exactly what visual impairment is. World health definitions are included in several of the chapters, and in terms of CVI no one adopted definition currently exists, although there have been recent attempts (Sakki et al., 2018). As such I wanted to ensure that acuity measures, which are the foundation of many traditional definitions of visual impairment, which are important, are not necessarily the sole or main driver to understand the nature of each person’s visual impairment. As we read through the book it is clear that much more information is needed to understand the world in which people with visual impairment inhabit. By demonstrating the complex nature of visual impairment in these first seven chapters, it is hoped that the Handbook is successful in demonstrating that in order to create the right enabling conditions for rich social and cultural experiences, a holistic approach to understanding visual impairment and blindness is need.

Holistic approaches are often found within education. As McLinden et al. (2017) suggest, qualified teachers of pupils with visual impairment can be understood to qualify and work within a holistic ecological framework. Approaches in the education of children with visual impairment have changed over several decades, so in order to contextualise this change and to see the progressive development of the education of pupils with visual impairment, the first chapter in Part III, covering the theme of education, takes an interesting holistic, historical American perspective. This chapter highlights the elements that have shaped the delivery of low vision education services to pupils. It shows how the influences from a range of areas – medical and educational discoveries, population changes, technological innovations, as well as legislation, funding and differing approaches to teacher education programmes – have all combined to influence our modern day practice. Chapter 9, written by Argyropoulos and Gentle, continues this theme and considers formal and informal approaches within education for pupils with visual impairment and or multiple disabilities and vision impairment. The chapter successfully links these approaches to micro- and macro-perspectives and as with the previous chapter we see just how important current technological, cultural, societal and political changes need to be taken into account when we start to examine the formal and informal contemporary “educational landscape” of pupils with visual impairment and for those with multiple disabilities.

Transition as any child, parent and educational professional will testify is an extremely important phase of the child’s life. So the third chapter in this theme (Chapter 10) by Douglas, Hewett and McLinden focuses upon the transition from school into higher education by young people with vision impairment. The authors make a distinction between “access to learning” and “learning to access”. The former focuses upon inclusive practice and environmental adjustments, while the latter focuses upon developing a young person’s agency and independence. Using a holistic ecological framework, several key messages merge that highlight the importance of good support structures, an inclusive environment and the utility of the young person’s own agency. Obtaining a positive destination after school such as higher and further education and or employment is critical. One way for that person to obtain this goal is through the importance of career education. In the last of the education-themed chapters,...