A backward chaining procedure was used to train a 6-year-old blind, nonverbal, severely mentally retarded boy to dress himself. Trainers performed three types of procedures: no help, verbal instructions, and physical guidance and instructions. Results indicated that the procedure was successful in teaching the skills necessary for dressing, that…

The article reviews historical challenges met by the blindness field including the epidemics of retrolental fibroplasia and Rubella. It discusses internal developments in the field including the trend from braille class to resource room, changed standards of teacher preparation, future functions of residential schools, and disability-specific…

Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences has provided educators with a new view of intelligence. It emphasizes that science, math and language are not the only ways to exhibit intelligence. People exhibit intelligence in many different ways. Each type of intelligence is as valuable as the others. Gardner classifies these intelligences…

A followup study of currently and previously enrolled students of the Michigan School for the Blind (MSB) and the Michigan School for the Deaf (MSD) is reported. Eligibility guidelines, services, enrollment, costs, and nature of the student body at each institution are described. Development and use of four questionnaires to evaluate eight…

An Attitude Toward Blindness Questionnaire (ATBQ) was developed to assess individual progress through a Veterans Administration blind rehabilitation program. The instrument is also meant to measure attitudes toward blindness for blind persons, rehabilitation workers, and a "naive" group without contact with the blind. A method of…

When children are visually handicapped to the point that they cannot read, some other form of information carrier, such as braille books, sound recordings, models, and realia, must be used. For deaf children, one must provide a variety of visual information on transparencies and captioned filmstrips. Retarded children need special materials which…

The paper focuses on educational services for blind and visually impaired children in Canada with emphasis on Ontario from the point of view of an administrator of a large rehabilitation agency. The existence is noted of five schools for the blind in Canada serving primarily multihandicapped populations. Effects of Ontario Bill 82 (1985) have…

In response to the urgent need of visually handicapped social work students for special help with their reading assignments, the Social Work Library at Adelphi University (New York) instituted a new and unique service: the Taping Program for Visually Handicapped Social Work Students. Until that time, the options opened to the visually impaired…

A study was initiated with 60 blind children (kindergarten through grade 2) in order to validate the order of a sequence of tactual discrimination tasks leading to the use of braille and the Optacon. Ss were tested with tasks designed for the readiness level (discrimination of large solid geometric shapes, flat puzzle pieces, embossed dot…

The paper describes the community residence and independent living services offered by Perkins School for the Blind which serves multi-impaired, blind, visually impaired, and deaf blind individuals. The first part reviews existing community living options and emphasizes the need for thorough diagnosis, extensive training in daily living skills and…

Research in the United States and abroad has led to advances in rehabilitation technology that enables blind and visually impaired persons to compete with sighted persons for employment. Relatively inexpensive devices such as pocket calculators, transistor radios, cassette recorders, and digital watches have become aids for the blind; some…

A research project was conducted to investigate sensory, concept, and locomotion skills in severely multiply handicapped children. The project involved the development of evaluation and teaching materials to be utilized by classroom teachers and paraprofessionals with multi-handicapped children with severe visual deficits. The programed…

Reviewed is an American Institutes for Research (AIR) study to identify predictors of Optacon success and to develop and field test appropriate Optacon training materials for use by 112 blind elementary and secondary students in 15 U.S. public and residential schools. Potential use of the Optacon (an optical to tactile conversion device that…

This report describes activities of the talking-book program of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) of the Library of Congress, with emphasis on activities conducted in cooperation with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) library program. First, the overall NLS program in the U.S. which…

This study compared deception detection accuracy and confidence levels for 72 blind and 71 sighted participants with only audible cues available. Participants from a community blind center and a small western university judged stimulus tapes, which consisted of deceptive and truthful audio messages. Deceptive messages were induced by implicating…