Visually handicapped children

Abstract

This is a numerically small but seriously disabled group. Visual disorders arise from a multitude of causes either within the eye itself or in those areas of the brain that deal with the interpretation of the visual phenomena. Blind children have to learn from attentive listening, smelling, touching and manipulating whatever lies within arm's reach. They generally dislike soft toys; they need playthings which provide good feelable shapes and textures, and above all a meaningful language. It is enough for normal individuals to close their eyes inorder to appreciate the grevious deprivation of the totally blind. It is more difficult to understand the baffling, visual world of a partially-sighted child who may possess a few patches of the visual field; this may prove highly useful for near vision but the child has little notion of distances, perspectives and spatial relationships and therefore cannot readily appreciate our predominantly visually organized world.