Suchergebnisse

Voluntary agencies in the future will face new responsibilities. Two fundamental changes that have already begun to occur are the reordering of priorities in the federal program of income maintenance for handicapped persons and the availability of a more accurate picture of the actual composition of the blind population of the United States. The changing role of the federal government, and state governments too, means that the services of private agencies must be re-examined and updated to insure that all necessary services continue to be provided. The recognition that the majority of blind persons are in the older age category and that there are very great numbers of persons with very limited, but still useful, vision means, in the first case, that independent living is not the only goal that clients need help in achieving and, in the second, that new approaches to helping partially sighted persons need to be developed and implemented. Finally, as an outcome of these and other changes, agencies for the blind must expand the ways in which they can work cooperatively with private and governmental agencies and the ways in which volunteers can be utilized most efficiently.

□ Visual impairment is not necessarily blindness and the requirements of visually impaired persons are in many ways significantly different from those of blind persons. All too often agencies for the blind have not distinguished between these different requirements in providing services. The essential difference is that blind persons must rely on their other senses in order to function, while partially sighted persons must be helped to use whatever vision they have in coordination with their other senses. In providing services to partially sighted persons, the following basic principles should be considered: 1) Full service requires the cooperation of medical, physical, and behavioral specialists; 2) Services for partially sighted clients should be individualized on the basis of their differences in degree and quality of sight; 3) Whatever vision the client has should be augmented or strengthened through either mechanical or physical means; and 4) Clients should be helped to enhance their perception to its maximum functional potential.

From the Field is a continuing series of reports from the American Foundation for the Blind's regional consultants on new ideas and practices thay have come across in their travels.