Opinion piece: Low vision care in a state-funded health system

I have been watching the debate over US health care with interest. I thought it may be interesting to discuss my experiences of working in a state-funded health system, and to provide my honest opinions of its strengths and weaknesses. This is based on my experience of working in a specialist centre in London, and [...]

What are the best journals which publish low vision research?

A PhD student in our lab is submitting her first paper in the low vision field and we were discussing where she should submit it so that it reaches the right audience. This led to quite a long conversation about what journals publish what type of low vision research. This post gives my subjective “top [...]

Journal article: Management of depression in people with visual impairment

I have noticed an increase in the number of conference presentations in the last 2-3 years concerning depression in visual impairment. It seems reasonably well established that people with low vision are about twice as likely to suffer from depression as the general population. There is a nice paper in this month’s Optometry and Vision [...]

What is the future of assistive devices for the visually impaired?

At the forthcoming Envision conference, a pre-conference discussion will be held on “Current Trends in Low Vision and Vision Rehabilitation Research: Where and How Should Scientists be Focusing their Efforts?”. Unfortunately I will not be at Envision until after this session has taken place, but it led me to think about what may happen in [...]

Journal article: A versatile optoelectronic aid for low vision patients

There is an interesting article in this month’s Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics by María Dolores Peláez-Coca, Fernando Vargas-Martín and colleagues which presents an electronic low vision aid which performs image processing on the fly (i.e. in real time). The system is called SERBA (an acronym for the Spanish of Reconfigurable Electro-optic System for Low-vision Aid). [...]

Eccentric viewing training: how do we know it works?

I am involved in the design of a randomised controlled trial to assess how useful eccentric viewing training is for people with central field loss. It’s proving to be a much harder question to answer than you may think. Eccentric viewing is the technique by which people with central vision loss use a specific area [...]