“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
“My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness”
Helen Keller quotes (American Author and Educator who was blind and deaf. 1880-1968)
Visual inability (Blindness) is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Total blindness is the complete lack of form and light perception and is clinically recorded as "NLP," an abbreviation for "no light perception.
All of us who are living in the World Society that has come down by sinking to a village , and where we claim ourselves civilized and humane , in reality has an obligation to treat the visually impaired with the same respect that sighted people receive. It is clear from the results of prevailing attitude of modern situation and condition of these people in the society that the visually impaired have not yet reached the level of respect they expect ,deserve and the society can claim that we are honest and fare to award them all that we can boast of .
According to the report of World Health Organization / WHO 2004 ; Over 40 million people in the world are blind, and over 120 million people have significant Low Vision conditions
that cannot be corrected, cured or treated by conventional refraction, medicine or surgery. This number is expected to double by the year 2020.
Over 90% of these visually impaired people live in developing countries like India. Less than 15% of these visually impaired people in developing countries like India have access to vision enhancement or vision rehabilitation services that could help to change their lives.
There are over 1.4 million visually impaired children age 0-14 years
The vast majority of visually impaired children with low vision conditions in developing countries like India are sent to blind schools despite having usable vision because they don't have access to or cannot afford vision enhancement or vision rehabilitation services that could help them to integrate them into regular schools.
A visually impaired adult or child can be trained, with the help of Vision Enhancement, Vision Rehabilitation and Assisting Technology and low vision aids to perform most daily tasks more confidently at home, in school, in the playground, in the kitchen and at the work place, in a safe and independent manner, if only they were aware and could easily access and afford such services
The reaction of the public to handicapped and disabled people remains capricious, and often prejudiced. The deaf have long been figures of fun: they are often ignored and easily retreat into solitude. However, the blind generally receive more sympathy, even admiration. Social Services for the blind unfortunately are not uniformly good throughout the country like India . However, some national organizations give great help and provide funds for research into blindness as well. In 1835 Louis Braille introduced his system of raised writing, where projecting dots represent a letter or number and are interpreted by touch, but it took 30 years to gain acceptance. In this electronic age there are many devices which can make an enormous difference to the blind person's quality of life.
The awareness- goal is to offer services to blind and visually impaired people in order to improve their quality of life and accomplish a better integration of the collective Personal Services -They cover four concrete areas:
Individual Services .......
1 - Basic rehabilitation -
Under Rehabilitation Program whose visual condition limits their ability to begin or continue work , as part of the Vocational Rehabilitation Program, and also as the part of our commitment to helping individuals find work, and employment opportunities. The Independent Living Rehabilitation Program assists adults who are blind or visually impaired to learn adaptive skills to continue to live independently with vision loss.
Through The Blind Children- Vocational Discovery and Development Program one can assists children who are blind and visually impaired to develop their individual potential. Emphasis is on restoring vision, reducing dependency, and preparing for vocational success.
The Transition Program, which is part of Vocational Rehabilitation services, provides educational and career guidance for adolescents and young adults.
The Blindness Education, Screening and Treatment Program can help
these people , keep their vision health 2 - Accompaniment and help to blind and visually impaired people
3 - Psychological help -Some Psychological Concepts must be taken in view to deal and behave with these people that help in proper adjustment in their daily life to make it easier and happy .
Confirmation Fixation Rigidly trying to keep, prove and justify certain beliefs.Fundamental Attribution Judging own errors based on circumstances .Over-Generalizing Going beyond the actual facts . Self-Serving Evaluation Tendency to judge oneself favorably in comparison to other people.Cognition/Perceptions , Anxious Thinking . Dissonance Reduction Inconsistency between new behavior and previous idea leading to new attitude.Depressive Thinking , disappointments, and hopelessness.Meta-Cognition Thoughts about thoughts.
Perceptual Set Perceiving something in a given way due to expectations.
4 - Educational help .
5 - Eye-donation .6 - Donation in form of money to related Organizations and to known individuals who are visually impaired .
Cultural Services.............
1 - Social-cultural animation
2 - Adaptation of cultural material
3 - Adaptation of live cultural events
4 - Adaptation of museums and monuments
Social Services.........................
These are the most general and are aimed to society in its totality. They cover five areas:
1 - Social integration - Social -Integration does simply means that these visually impaired people should be brought into the main stream of the society and we should try to create an atmosphere where they feel as the part and partial of the society as a whole ; with equal respect , place , educational opportunities their development scheme of personality and ultimately some suitable job to make them independent to create a feeling of self -respect as citizen of country with equal feeling of livelihood .
2 - Work integration
3 - Vindicating our rights
4 - Resolution of bureaucratic problems
5 - Promoting research- The very important scope lies in thr research -work in this field and the best of our scientists and social -scientists should be employed to this great cause ....first to eliminate this vice at different stages as born , bore and brought by avoidably causes as - poverty , illiteracy , ignorance and poor preventive and remedial resources . This need an enthusiasm and good -great humane -strong will on the part of individual , social and institutional / Governmental awareness .
"Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are ...we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged."
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