A basic need for a child is to belong to a group (Maslow, 1970). Groups help children: to develop relationships and to foster individual mental health (Johnson and Johnson, 1989); and disabled and non-disabled children, when given assistance, can develop relationships with each other (Sideris, 1998). But there are very few opportunities in Cyprus…

Neurofibromatosis, type 1 (NF-1) is a common genetic disorder affecting 1 in 3,500-4,000 individuals in the world. Mutations of the NF-1 gene produce a myriad of physical, medical, and psychological manifestations. Although there is a very high degree of variability in the manifestations between individuals with NF-1, the majority of children and…

Albinism has the potential to affect young people both emotionally and psychologically. Their condition is unique and is surrounded by myths and stereotypes. The unusual appearance of children with oculocutaneous albinism draws attention to them and their vision impairment can impact on their development of social skills and peer relationships. In…

This article describes the results in the employment domain of a larger study of the lifestyles of 328 Canadian youths, aged 15-21 and 22-30, 131 of whom were blind and 197 of whom had low vision. The youths completed a survey on their work-related experiences, including their current employment status and job-search strategies. In addition to…

Four experiments investigated how readily infants achieve perceptual organization by lightness and form similarity. Infants were (a) familiarized with elements that could be organized into rows or columns on the basis of lightness or form similarity and tested with vertical versus horizontal bars depicting the familiar versus novel organization or…

This article explores how visual impairment might impact on early social and emotional development including self-awareness and communication with others. Some children show a "developmental setback" and other worrying developmental trajectories in the early years, including autistic related behaviours and autistic spectrum disorders.…

This article presents a survey of the demographical, educational and visual functional characteristics of children attending a specialist paediatric low-vision assessment clinic at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. Comprehensive data were collected retrospectively from children attending the paediatric low-vision clinic between January 2003 and…

The use of virtual environments for special needs is as diverse as the field of Special Education itself and the individuals it serves. Individuals with special needs often face challenges with attention, language, spatial abilities, memory, higher reasoning and knowledge acquisition. Research in the use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)…

Both behavioral and neuroimaging evidence indicate that individuals with autism demonstrate marked abnormalities in the processing of faces. These abnormalities are often explained as either the result of an innate impairment to specialized neural systems or as a secondary consequence of reduced levels of social interest. A review of the…

Colleges increasingly rely on the Web to attract, inform, and interact with students. This makes Web site accessibility and usability critical concerns, particularly for public community colleges, which educate sizable numbers of students with disabilities. As committed providers of postsecondary education to students with disabilities and thus a…

This paper questions whether affordances are allied exclusively to dorsal stream processing within the visual system, or whether in fact different affordances are subserved by functionally independent neural pathways. Using case study evidence from patients with various visual pathologies, I argue that affordances can be categorised into type…

The study examined the ability to estimate the number of dots in Braille symbols by 21 legally blind and 21 sighted adults. Results indicated that this task was difficult for both blind and sighted subjects with little improvement over trials. Errors of underestimation exceeded errors of overestimation. (DB)

In an eight-week residential summer camp program for visually impaired children, activities of daily living (ADL) were offered as part of the regular program. Campers consistently indicated that this was a most worthwhile learning experience. (CL)

The Jordy electronic magnification device is one of a small number of electronic headborne devices designed to provide people with low vision the capability to perform near-range, intermediate-range, and distance viewing tasks. This report seeks to define the benefits of using the Jordy as a low vision device by people who are legally blind. The…

The authors investigated past and present physical activities of 6 older individuals with diverse types of visual impairment who participated in a walking group. The authors identified the participants' lived experiences of visual impairment and physical activity through interviews and assessed their current activity levels by using pedometers.…