Handicapped vision

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 14

Handicapped vision

Blindness and Visual Handicap: The Facts. By J. H. Dobree and Eric Boulter. Oxford, 1982. 235 pp. $22.75. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) A consultant ophthalmic surgeon and a former Director General of the Royal National Institute for the Blind in London — one sighted and the other blind — combine to write this book in a series of medical publications for the layman. The book keeps up the high standard set by a recent volume in the series, on Parkinson’s Disease, with an easy-to-follow first half on the anatomy, neurology and physiology of the eye and its associated organs; its deficiencies, injuries, diseases, genetic deformities; and warning signs to heed and seek immediate medical advice.

The tone is sensible, non-patronising, realistic in possible prognosis, but optimistic in the variety of possibilities and treatments available. There are special sections on developing blindness in children and in the Third World where most are found of the 42 million or so people who are so handicapped by their sight that they are limited in the work that they can do. Figures, however, do not emphasise sufficiently the point made that, "People do not really go blind by the millions. They go blind individually, each in his own predicament. In the formulation of strategy and objectives we

must keep in view the individual and his community." The second half of the book deals with blindness as a theme from within the blind person. This co-author speaks of the fear of the dark inherent in most young children and the fact that most blind are able to perceive a certain amount of light, and thus do not live in a state of complete darkness. Handicaps of travel are emphasised as the key to participation in the activities of daily life. Some travel problems can be resolved with aids, guide dogs and electronic sound-beacons which, for examples, help a blind gardener to return to his lawn mower after emptying the clippings, and electronic light probes which can differentiate between dark and light clothing. Now we have talking calculators,

reading machines that can scan printed pages of a book and read it aloud to a blind operator, and limitless horizons as computer science blossoms. Perhaps some decades into the future it may be possible for blind people to “see" by means of synthetic or indirect vision in which impulses are carried direct to the brain, by-passing the eye and the optic nerve. With its lists of addresses and handy hints on how to contact helpers to the blind and legislative information, this is a most useful book for anyone living or working with this appreciable percentage of our population.