Blind and partially sighted physiotherapy in the United Kingdom. A century of development, success and challenge. Will it still belong?

Background:In 2019 the Association of Visually Impaired Chartered Physiotherapists, originally the Association of Blind Certificated Masseurs, celebrated the centenary of its formation and becoming the first ever Specific Interest Group admitted to the Incorporated Society of Trained Masseuses which, later in the 20th century, became the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. These landmarks motivated the author to research for this chronological, descriptive, narrative review of the history of blind physiotherapy and its contribution to physiotherapy in the United Kingdom. Purpose:The early training and practice of massage by blind practitioners, the organizational milestones in mainstream and blind physiotherapy and the inter-relationship between the two is considered. Key developments, challenges, innovations and opportunities throughout the history are reviewed including the impact of World War 1 and contribution of blind physiotherapy to the profession. Conclusion:Significant changes in physiotherapy educational and training arrangements for blind students and changes in physiotherapy practice generally over the last four decades engender serious questions about whether blind physiotherapy will still "belong", despite the increasing aspiration within society toward acceptance of diversity and inclusion. The author challenges the profession about whether it will facilitate blind physiotherapy to continue making its valuable contribution and be included. Will it still "belong?"

On being a pathologist: a pathway to pathology practice; the added value of supplemental vocational training and mentoring in college and medical school.

Traditionally, vocational training and liberal arts (and premedical) curricula have been separate education tracks. This personal profile describes a program that evolved from the partial fusion of vocational training and a premedical education track. My personal health issue, visual impairment, which presumably resulted as a complication of congenital toxoplasmosis, hampered my ability to read in grammar school and necessitated my placement in remedial reading classes until eighth grade. My father created an independent home-based vocational training program that ran in parallel to my traditional school education all the way through college. In this case study, I provide an overview of this hybrid education program, which we refer to as the Vocational Training/Medical College Curriculum of the Future (VTMC). This term implies that the education of a student from K-12 school through medical college is a continuum. I find it useful to conceptualize a single education continuum beginning with vocational training and ending with medical education, with a large overlap area in the middle. In this paper, I describe a set of my work experiences that leveraged and reinforced my didactic education experiences. Mentors who supported aspects of the VTMC program have included a college president, a US Congressman, a Nobel Laureate, and a Massachusetts General Hospital leader in academic pathology. Elements of this innovative VTMC program have been used in K-12 public schools and in nonmedical graduate school programs.

From Shell Shock to Shellac: The Great War, Blindness, and Britain's Talking Book Library.

Britain's Talking Book Service began as a way of providing reading material to soldiers blinded during the First World War. This account traces the talking book's development from the initial experiments after the War to its debut and reception among blind soldiers and civilians in the 1930s. It has been put together using archives held by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (before its Royal Charter, the NIB) and Blind Veterans UK (formerly St. Dunstan's), the two organizations responsible for Britain's Talking Book Service. The essay's first section reconstructs the search for an alternative way of reading that would benefit people with vision impairments. The next part demonstrates the talking book's impact on the lives of people with disabilities, recovering the voices of blind readers left out of most histories of books, literacy, and reading practices in the twentieth century. The final section reconstructs a debate over the value of recorded books, showing that disputes over their legitimacy are as old as recorded books themselves. In sum, this essay confronts the central issue raised by the convergence of books, media, and disability in the War's aftermath: can a book talk?

Vision loss and hearing loss in painting and musical composition.

This article considers the impact of vision and hearing loss on great painters and musical composers. The visual work of Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet all showed alterations as their vision failed. In contrast, Gabriel Fauré, Bedrich Smetana, and Ludwig von Beethoven wrote many of their best compositions while totally deaf, and Georg Friedrich Handel and Frederick Delius struggled to compose late in life when they lost their vision (although their hearing remained excellent). There are 2 major distinctions between the role of vision and hearing for these artistic disciplines. First, there is a surrogate means of "hearing" music, through the musical score, which allows composers to write and edit music while totally deaf. The greatest problem with deafness for a skilled composer is interference from internal noise (tinnitus). There is no surrogate for vision to allow a painter to work when the subject is a blur or the colors on the canvas cannot be distinguished. Second, although the appreciation of art is visual and that of music is auditory, the transcription of both art and musical composition is visual. Thus, visual loss does pose a problem for a composer accustomed to working with good sight, because it disrupts habitual methods of writing and editing music.

Do blind people see race? Social, legal, and theoretical considerations.

Although the meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries, one thread of thought unifies almost all of the many diverging perspectives: a largely unquestioned belief that race is self-evident and visually obvious, defined largely by skin color, facial features, and other visual cues. This suggests that "seeing race" is an experience largely unmediated by broader social forces; we simply know it when we see it. It also suggests that those who cannot see are likely to have a diminished understanding of race. But is this empirically accurate?I examine these questions by interviewing people who have been totally blind since birth about race and compare their responses to sighted individuals. I not only find that blind people have as significant an understanding of race as anyone else and that they understand race visually, but that this visual understanding of race stems from interpersonal and institutional socializations that profoundly shape their racial perceptions. These findings highlight how race and racial thinking are encoded into individuals through iterative social practices that train people to think a certain way about the world around them. In short, these practices are so strong that even blind people, in a conceptual sense, "see" race. Rather than being self-evident, these interviews draw attention to how race becomes visually salient through constitutive social practices that give rise to visual understandings of racial difference for blind and sighted people alike. This article concludes with a discussion of these findings' significance for understanding the role of race in law and society.

[The punishment of blinding and the life of the blind]. / Die Strafe der Blendung und das Leben blinder Menschen.

The article deals with a group of people who were deprived of their eyesight by private acts of force or by executions of lawful sentences. In early medieval texts blinding is frequently mentioned in connection with popes, kings, princes or bishops. However, since the High Middle Ages these dignitaries were increasingly spared the loss of their eyes. It may be said that on the whole, from the eighth to the twelfth century, blinding was overwhelmingly used to dispose of political adversaries, but did then rapidly turn into a criminal punishment. In the earliest 'Landfriedensordnungen' of the late eleventh century, the loss of the perpetrator's eyes crops up as punishment for breach of the peace, while later it was applied to a variety of more or less serious offences. The destiny of the blinded in the early Middle Ages is only highlighted by sketches of a few individual cases; for the High and late Middle Ages--apart from a few notable exceptions--it is only possible to reflect on the general situation of blind people in society, since the sources usually do not differentiate between those having lost their sight through human violence or due to other causes.

Features of the development of a welfare system for visually disabled people in Denmark.

PURPOSE: To describe the development of a formal system of welfare for blind and partially sighted people in Denmark. METHODS: The principal laws in Denmark relating to a formal system of welfare for blind and partially sighted people are noted and commented on. No such collection of laws has been found in the literature. The history of aid to visually disabled people in Denmark is described, as are the Danish classifications of visual impairment. DEVELOPMENT: Formalized welfare for blind and partially sighted people was started in Denmark in 1811, as a private initiative by the Kjaede Order. Later, the Danish state took over responsibility, and in 1858 the Royal Danish Institute for the Blind was established. Since then a series of laws concerning welfare for blind and partially sighted people have been issued in accordance with economic and social development in Denmark. In 1858 the Braille writing system for blind people was introduced. The Danish Association of the Blind was founded in 1911 and has profoundly influenced subsequent legislation. During the last 10 years, several visual centres have been established. Since 1968 prevention of blindness has also played a prominent role in Denmark. CONCLUSION: Great steps have been taken towards improving the welfare of blind and partially sighted people. However, being blind is still very difficult. Modern technologies and hectic lifestyles have created new problems for blind people. The obligations of the Danish state towards visually disabled people have, therefore, increased in recent years.