British Journal of Visual Impairment

Large-scale social surveys of visually impaired people often explore participants’ mobility and travel behaviour. What is methodologically more challenging is gathering participant-centred data in relation to their own interpretation of the barriers they face. Findings from a national survey of visually impaired people are presented in this article (N = 960, probability sample drawn from the British registers of blind and partially sighted people). The research made use of the World Health Organisation ‘International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health’ (ICF) to develop an interview schedule in relation to visually impaired people’s participation in mobility and travel. Results found that participants identified a range of barriers and enablers to greater mobility which included individually-based explanations (e.g. difficulties with their eye sight) and socially-based explanations (e.g. inadequate public transport systems). Logistic regression analysis revealed that participants who particularly focused upon individually-based barriers had more severe visual impairment, worried most about their vision, and had most recently lost their sight. The findings highlight how professionals and family must be cautious not to reinforce visually impaired people’s perceptions of individual barriers and any associated sense of helplessness. The use of the ICF model also provided an innovative approach to survey-based studies: the methods adopted encouraged participants to identify issues they thought were important, while still generating findings which can be statistically generalised.

One key challenge to those charged with tackling the social exclusion of visually impaired people is having information about the extent to which visual impairment is related to the ability to enjoy and participate in various aspects of life. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), this article considers how self-reported visual impairment is related to older people’s physical health and cognitive abilities, their economic and housing conditions, their social engagement, as well as their emotional well-being and life-satisfaction. We find self-reported poor vision to be associated with multiple disadvantages in those outcome measures. Further research is needed to establish causal links between visual impairment and the various health, economic, social and emotional well-being experiences documented in this article. Nevertheless, secondary data analysis of ELSA offers a useful and cost-effective research approach.

The purpose of this study was to explore the self concept of adolescents who are sighted and blind with respect to gender in India. The sample was made up of 160 participants aged 15 to 18 years: of whom 100 were sighted and 60 were blind. The results of the t-tests illustrated that sighted male adolescents scored higher in the overall self-concept scores as compared to sighted female adolescents. However such significant differences in the self-concept scores were not found between the male and female adolescents who are blind. The sighted adolescents scored higher than the adolescents who are blind in three of the total six dimensions of self concept, thus also scoring higher on the overall self-concept score.

The aim of this study was to determine the provision of learning and teaching materials for pupils with visual impairment in basic and high schools of Zambia. A survey approach utilizing a questionnaire, interviews and a review of the literature was adopted for the study. The findings demonstrated that most schools in Zambia did not provide adequate and suitable learning and teaching materials to pupils with visual impairment. Further, many schools did not have resource rooms for storage and use of learning and teaching materials for these pupils. Though most schools have a policy for procurement of learning and teaching materials, their budgetary allocations for such activities are usually too small or non-existent. Consequently, most children with visual impairment appear to perform poorly in their studies and are required to drop science and mathematics subjects due to lack of teaching and learning materials. The study recommends that a good infrastructure is required to ensure the development of quality learning and teaching materials, a workable procurement system, an effective and efficient distribution system of learning and teaching materials, and teacher training in the use of materials for the children.

What is meant by the term ‘wellbeing’? Much has been written on the relationship between chronic illness and mental health outcomes, particularly in terms of ‘happiness’, and the reciprocal relationship between physical and emotional health. Visual impairment research into wellbeing has tended to focus specifically on the concept of emotional wellbeing, and how functional disability may impact negatively on mental health. As a consequence of such research, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of ‘preventing’ negative mental health outcomes in the visually impaired population and ‘promoting’ emotional wellbeing. However, despite the many wellbeing interventions and initiatives, the actual meaning of the term remains rather nebulous. Depending on one’s standpoint, ‘wellbeing’ may translate as a physical, social, emotional or even spiritual construct and follow different models which all have their own agendas, aims, methodologies and discourse. Furthermore, a shift is evident towards a two-dimensional framework of wellbeing which considers not just what makes chronically ill individuals happy in terms of goals and aspirations, but what makes them ‘flourish’ and find meaning in life. It is specifically this second dimension of wellbeing which remains to be investigated in visual impairment research. The purpose of this article is therefore to present the theoretical underpinnings of the wellbeing agenda, the methodological implications, and the impact on future research into wellbeing and visual impairment.