Visual Impairment, Inclusion and Citizenship in South Africa.

People with visual impairment face significant material challenges to access and inclusion in South Africa. These are in large part rooted in and supported by prejudiced assumptions about the needs, nature and capabilities of this group. The cultural and psychological face of oppression needs to be attended to. To this end, this viewpoint brings together the work of three visually impaired scholars in three key areas pertaining to the promotion of the inclusion and citizenship of visually impaired persons in South Africa. These areas are education; rehabilitation; and social inclusion and visibility. This work argues that undoing lifelong exclusion requires examining how disablism is embedded in the very fabric of our societies and operational at various levels: material, administrative, cultural and relational.

Ties that bind, and double-bind: visual impairment, help, and the shaping of relationships.

Purpose: Scholars agree that effective rehabilitation relies on a bedrock of reciprocity, relational trust, and authenticity. It is therefore essential for practitioners to develop insight into the complex dynamics within helping relationships. This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of visually impaired students' experience of informal helping relationships. Methods: Ten visually impaired students at a South African university participated in one of two semi-structured focus group interviews (six and four in each group, respectively) wherein we explored their experience of informal helping relationships. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to make sense of the data. Results: Help, according to the participants, can militate against visibility and complete acceptance, and has the potential to cause helpers to feel entrapped. By contrast, some students found that help offered benefits to relationships by boosting the helper's self-esteem and affording disabled students the opportunity to make friends. Conclusion: Decisions whether to accept help were mediated more by relationship factors than by the need for help. These findings are important for rehabilitation professionals, as deep relationship can come into being during the course of a rehabilitation process. Although this study was conducted in an informal setting, the relational dynamics that we explore are also applicable to clinical relationships between disabled persons and rehabilitation professionals. Implications for rehabilitation In this paper, we provide an overview of the intricacies involved in care and helping relationships; In order for rehabilitation to be successful, these relationships should ideally be real, trusting, and authentic; Yet, authenticity and spontaneity often get lost in helping relationships, as help-recipients may deny help when they need it, and accept help when perfectly able to cope without it. These decisions are mediated more by relationship factors than by the need for help; In their daily practice, it is essential for health professionals to be mindful of these relational intricacies within care relationships; We recommend that professionals remain motivated to continuously reflect on their own actions and on the emotional investment they might have in their role as a helper; Our last recommendation is for rehabilitation professionals to spend energy on exploring, through open and transparent discussions with their disabled patients, the relational dynamics in their relationship.

Driving in unheard silence: Disability and the politics of shutting up.

The politics of silence is central to disability experience and the field of disability studies. In this analytical autoethnography, I write about my silences as a visually impaired woman. I explore and make sense of personal life stories through a theoretical perspective. The analysis of these personal experiences lead me to argue that disability-related silences are mostly created through the confluence of inaccessible physical and social environments and the psychological internalisation of these worlds. I also discuss the ways in which I am currently regaining my voice. Further research on resistance by disabled persons is recommended.

'It's better if someone can see me for who I am': Stories of (In)visibility for Students with a visual impairment within South African Universities.

Issues of visibility, invisibility and the nondisabled gaze are very relevant to the lives of many disabled persons. With this paper we tentatively show that, despite the physical 'over'visibility of disabled bodies, many intricate parts of their personhood remain obscured and invisible. Interviews with 23 students with a visual impairment revealed that they sometimes experienced stares and averted gazes from their sighted counterparts. In response, they often hid their entire impairment, or parts thereof, in an effort to conform and gain acceptance and to earn membership to a nondisabled peer group. Acceptance was often found in companionship with fellow disabled peers. Since these stories told of continuing exclusion for disabled students on tertiary grounds, further participatory research is recommended.

Experiences of visually impaired students in higher education: Bodily perspectives on inclusive education.

Although previous literature sheds light on the experiences of visually impaired students on tertiary grounds, these studies failed to provide an embodied understanding of their lives. In-depth interviews with 15 visually impaired students at one university demonstrated the ways in which they experienced their disability and the built environment in their bodies. At the same time, lost, fearful, shameful and aching bodies revealed prevailing gaps in provision for disabled students. Through this research it becomes clear how the environment is acutely felt within fleshly worlds, while bodies do not fail to tell of disabling societal structures. Based on the bodily stories, we thus make recommendations to improve the lives of visually impaired students on tertiary campuses.