Have you ever imagined yourself as a movie producer who could tell the stories of the remarkable successes in the field of visual impairment and blindness? With the right buildup music and the careful selection of a popular actor or a promising young ingenue (ideally, someone with a visual impairment), any one of these real-life stories could be a…

With the passage of Goals 2000, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the Education Science Reform Act of 2002, Congress has put a priority on a science curriculum for children that is based on research on the best practices in science education. According to the U.S. Department of Education, teachers "need to know what programs and strategies…

This article presents an intersubjective developmental theory that focuses primarily on the development of the interworld between caregiver and infant and uses it to integrate and interpret the seemingly incoherent and contradictory research findings on the interactions between mothers and their infants with visual impairments. Implications for…

This article discusses the significant personnel shortages in education and rehabilitation in the field of blindness and visual impairment and provides a brief overview of one approach to addressing this shortage, distance education. Distance learning environments and strategies are described, along with evidence of the effectiveness of distance…

This article explores issues of allied health professionals who provide vision rehabilitation services to individuals with visual impairments. It questions whether allied health professionals receive sufficient training to work with this population, identifies challenges facing the rehabilitation field, and suggests ways allied health…

This article describes controversies over the use of personality tests with adults with visual impairments in applied occupational testing. It reviews studies of personality profiles of sighted individuals and individuals with visual impairments and studies in which the content of items has been adapted for adults who are visually impaired.…

This brief article uses observational data of a 4-year-old child with a visual impairment to examine the development of early literacy skills through home literacy experiences. (DB)

Examines the areas of visual and physical efficiency that are important to reading and writing braille or large print and conditions and modifications that may be used to make the selected media effective for individuals who have both visual and physical impairments. (Author/DB)

This interview between Mark Laird, statewide employment specialist with Missouri Rehabilitation Services for the Blind, and Gil Johnson, director of American Foundation for the Blind West, describes an innovative rehabilitation model that forges relationships with businesses and has doubled the number of consumers with visual impairments who find…

Discusses the history of coverage of vision-related rehabilitation by health insurance and identifies opportunities for expanded coverage within the rapidly changing health care environment. Reviews strategies for persuading health insurance plans to fund vision-related rehabilitation, including educating the public, reconfiguring service…

Chronicles the experiences and feelings of the authors, parents of a son who was blind from birth. It describes their encounters with the public educational system from kindergarten to college, concentrating on the boy's adolescent years, from middle school to college. Also discussed are mainstreaming, friendships, time management, contact with…

A mother of an adolescent daughter with blindness and learning disabilities focuses on how she helped her daughter improve reading and writing skills by finding a meaningful purpose for those skills in daily life. This article discusses early signs of learning problems, the learning environment, talking books, books in braille, technology,…

Describes the author's personal experience as a blind student at the Living Skills Center for the Visually Impaired, a transition program in San Pablo, California, and at college. Also describes a curriculum developed to help students with visual impairments make the transition to college. (DB)

The author, born with a severe visual impairment, addresses the tendency of adolescents with visual impairments to try to hide the disability and "pass" as unimpaired with their peers. It is suggested that these adolescents be helped to find a comfortable balance between taking excessive risks and allowing visual impairment or blindness to be an…

The literature on the effects of congenital blindness on infants' development of motor functions and concepts of object permanence is reviewed. The article questions the idea that infants must first develop an object concept before sound clues alone will elicit reaching. Possible interventions to redress the effects of congenital blindness on…