ABSTRACT
Children and young people who have been assessed as having vision impairment are not a homogeneous group. Vision impairment is caused by a wide range of conditions, some of which affect the eye itself, and others which result from damage to the optic pathways to the brain or to the visual cortex itself. Vision plays an important role in linking different types of sensory information. The child who has little or no vision can obviously draw some information through the distant sense of hearing but will be heavily reliant on information received through his or her close senses. Detailed video analysis revealed that the role of vision in monitoring actions gradually changes. Longitudinal studies enable researchers to monitor particular areas of development in individual children over a period of time. Selma Fraiberg noticed that blind children’s hands frequently made particular movements in response to pleasure or interest before they became able to reach out intentionally towards objects or people.
