ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a preliminary exploration of how disability—in this case, congenital blindness—can impact on musical development using the musictheoretical approach to the cognition of musical structure set out by Ockelford (2002, 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2006). The impact is shown to be twofold: direct, stemming from the effects of visual disability on auditory development—in particular the processing of musical sounds; and indirect, resulting from the attitudes of others to severe sensory loss and the confused expectations that can arise as a consequence. Hence, this chapter draws on both the medical and the social models of disability, aiming to fuse the two within an integrative paradigm as described, for example, by Seelman (2004).
