Facts of Visually Impaired, Essay Example

Introduction

Visual impairment is also referred to as low vision. This is a rigorous reduction in vision and the condition cannot be corrected. People who are visually impaired can never use contact lenses or standard glasses because these two procedures cannot help. A person has restricted ability to function not only at certain tasks but all the tasks. As compared to a normal person, a visually impaired person has legal blindness of 20/200 which is a reduced vision and this appears as if a person who is visually impaired is seeing through a tunnel (Harris, 2008).

The social and educational effects of visual impairment are so adverse; these people have a hard time functioning as the other normal people with clear vision. A person will have limited ability in seeing the programs appropriate for education, these educational media include; white boards, black boards, textbooks, photocopies of term papers, the computer screens, or the normal environmental signs. A person will be able to hear a talk from a teacher who is far away but without seeing the gestures that accompany the speech. It will be hard for a person to fully understand what is being taught. A person will not have the student to student’s relationship in terms of gestures or signs and symbols using when in the class room. This kind of relationship is good because students often help each other when one has lost focus in class and the other students puts one back into focus.

The social effects are not good. This is because for a person to fully communicate to another person, a visually impaired person has to first of all touch the person’s face to know who they are or listen to the distinct difference between voices to know who they are having a conversation with. It is also hard for a visually impaired person to fully make lasting friends with other people because they (visually impaired) are always in need of some assistance. If it is not crossing the streets, then it is going to the correct lavatory or choosing the right products for their consumption. These people usually have a lot of questions on how something actually looks like, the color and also the appeal it has to the normal people and this becomes a bother to people in the company of visually impaired persons.

Social Approaches to Enhance Students With Visual Impairment

The fact that these people cannot be able to visualize color, weather, contrast or movement is one reason why the visually impaired are social misfits in the society. To help these people connect well with other people or the environment; a couple of measures have been put to place. The visually impaired people are given guide dogs or the white canes to enable them to travel safely. The dogs are often trained to do that type of work. These people are taken for rehabilitation so as to learn how to be independent even when they have impaired vision. For a person with reduced vision, a talking clock and training are used in order to survive like the rest of the normal people. These people are taught how to manage their money, cleanliness procedures, personal care and also cooking so as not to fully depend on other people for almost everything.

Educational Approaches to Enhance Students With Visual Impairment

Student who are visually impaired are taught in public schools together with other normal students so that learning for them can be a good experience. This is a good action because the students can have a sense of belonging to the whole society and not be confined to a blind school institution which happens mostly. Today many countries offer employment programs to those who are visually impaired. This is a very helpful because a person can be able to work and also earn a lot of money for their upkeep. These people can be allowed to teach or lecture, they can be allowed to sell in vending stands in all public buildings. The vending stands can be full cafeterias or newspaper stand. The improvement of Braille and also voice recognition system has helped in learning. Technology is so advanced that there is an option for the visually impaired; the availability of sound system in computers for the people who cannot see the computer screen. They are given easy instruction by programmed computer software which teaches people how to operate a computer (Kvale & Buset, 2007).

Statistics on Visually Impaired People All Over the World

It has been reported that 35% of the total world population are visually impaired. This was carried out after a long period of time where people are born visually impaired or during their development acquire the disorder (Harris, 2008). Old people are the most affected and also the children who are born without proper care. People become visually impaired because of; nutrition, diseases (glaucoma), macular degeneration, diabetes mellitus and also cataracts. Infections with diseases such as leprosy, herpes simplex, river blindness and also trachoma cause a large number of vision impaired cases in the whole world.  It has also been discovered that people with vision impairment are depressed and often anxious. The fact that these people have a lot of problems that mainly deal with functioning makes them prone to high levels of depression because they are psychologically tortured into believing that they are less important as compared to the rest of the population who are normal (Harris, 2008).

Medical Definition of Visually Impaired

Visually impairment means that a person is medically verified as being blind. This is accompanied by a lot of limitations in sight hence interfering with the ability of a person to acquire interaction or information with one’s environment to the point that special education instruction is required (Rike, 2003).). Vision impairment is the inability for a person to tell the difference between light and dark. A person can also have reduced vision whereby a person has blurred vision and cannot see anything clearly. A medically impaired vision is controlled by the Central nervous system after an infection or other causative factors. Here the central nervous system controls the vision of things that occur in nature. A person is unable to visualize objects and people or movements. This defect cannot be fixed or treated because the brain has already conditioned the whole body to lack vision qualities. Instead the central nervous system makes the person have heightened sense of smell or hearing or even touch (Rike, 2003).

Educational Definition for a Blind Person

Vision is measured using Snellen charts. These charts have letters that are of different sizes and the letters are read by people with one eye alternatively. The standard set distance for a person with normal vision is usually 20ft. Here a person can be able to read clearly the words on the chart without straining the eye. For perfect vision, a person can be able to read from a distance of 40ft from the chart and still see the words clearly (Harris, 2008). For those who are visually impaired, reading words from the chart from any distance is a hustle. Most people cannot even see the words while some with reduced vision only see a blurred representation of the chart. Students with visual impairment are faced with a major problem in the field of science education because the field involves a lot of class outlines, textbooks, class schedules, videotapes, films, computers, television and laser disks. The students who are visually impaired have only a limited access to all these resources, that is the reason why most visually impaired people do not invest their education in the medical, research and science field.

Improving the Visually Impaired in Society

The visually impaired are helped to learn the basic survival skills so as to fit in the society. Many people take piano lessons because it requires the use of great memory and sound incorporation. These people are the best artists in the history of the world in the sense that, they know all the keys by touching and memorizing them (Foos & Pack, 1992). These people are also involved in social groups that have a common goal and that is the social interaction among the visually impaired to develop techniques of building self confidence and accepting themselves as equal members of the society.

How the Visually Impaired Can Be Enhanced in the Academic Life

The contemporary world has created ways to deal with all kinds of defects in today’s society. Advanced technology has really helped a lot of visually impaired people to learn without difficulties. Visually impaired students often constitute a learning sort of community (Harris, 2008), by virtue of the fact that they have been brought together by the assistive technologies but not their disability. The computer generated programs however required practice because the programs keep on changing with new versions being created (Brothy & Craven, 2003). Rike (2003) suggests that librarians should apply a team approach when teaching literacy skills to blind students (44).Buset (2007)suggests that the idea of transforming the web tutorial (a learning tool) based on the information of literacy modules which are turned into accessible teaching source (33).

It is clear that disability is not inability for the students with impaired vision. Although at first, the learning procedure might be hard to grasp, as time goes by, the system becomes easy to understand. With improved technology, people with vision impairment can now chat with friends over the internet with the help of high powered computers and also intensive computer generated software. The visually impaired can also learn using computers both to listen and also print information needed for their educational material to help them pass their examinations. It has been discovered that enrolling visually impaired students into public schools helps in building self esteem and also enables creativity as compared to leaving the students in institutions for the blind. No one knows how it feels to be visually impaired until one is visually impaired. This simple fact encourages people to help those who are visually impaired live normal lives even though they (the visually impaired) are not normal. When people join forces or hands to help each other, the world will have better teachers, artists, composers and also writers who are visually impaired.

References

Kvale, S. & Buset, K.J. (2007). VIKO—an e-learning tool for information literacy support to all

students. Library Literature & Information Science Full Text database. Retrieved June 12, 2009, from http://ntnu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:123111/FULLTEXT01

Rike, G.E. (2003). Integrating information literacy into the college experience: Ann Arbor: Pierian Press.

Harris, B.R. (2008). Communities as necessity in information literacy development: Challenging the standards. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34(3), 248-255.

Brothy, P. & Craven, J. (2007). Web accessibility.  Library Trends, 55(4), 950–972.

Foos & Pack. (1992). How libraries must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Phoenix: Oryx Press.