Vision and Aging: Issues in Social Work Practice. - book reviews

Age and Ageing,  May, 1993  by Sally French

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Edited by Nancy Weber New York: The Howarth Press. 1992. 196 pp. Price US $14.95 (paperback); US $24.95 (hardback).

This book gives an overview of services for blind and severely visually impaired people in the USA. There are 15 chapters, many of which describe specific research and community projects. For example one chapter explains the development of a visual screening questionnaire, and another describes a community-based service for older visually impaired adults.

The book is easy to read and based firmly on professional social service practice and provision. The fact that it concerns services which are based in the USA, and which are underpinned by different legislation, reduces its relevance to a British readership, although the broad issues are equally applicable in this country. By the middle of the book I began to find some degree of repetition in the various chapters.

As a visually impaired person myself, I found the book disappointing on various counts. The views of organizations of disabled people are not represented and are not reflected in the reference lists. There is little consideration, for example, of the hostile physical environment in which we are compelled to live and how this, rather than our actual impairments, can give rise to psychological problems such as lowered self-esteem and loss of confidence. Similarly, the concept of |adjustment' which has been so harshly criticized by disabled people themselves, is neither defined nor challenged, yet the underlying assumption that to |adjust' is to |accept' our situation, is condoned. There is also a strong emphasis on |needs' rather than |rights' and one of the chapters relies heavily on the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps which has been overwhelmingly rejected by organizations of disabled people.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Oxford University Press
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group