Static balance ability of persons with visual impairment on firm and foam surfaces

Triloki Prasad,Subhankar Ghosh,Asis Goswami

doi:10.5507/euj.2020.002

Abstract

The Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) is an easily administered test of short duration static In daily activities including sports, people with low vision (partially sighted) or partial blindness and visual impairment face difficulty while balancing their body in static positions. The purpose of this study is to test and stability of people with low vision or partially sightedness (PS) and full blindness (FB) using BESS test. The BESS was used to measure the error in the range from 0 for excellent balance and 10 for very poor balance. A total of 106 volunteers participated in the study that included 43 PS (mean age = 17.5y, SD = 3.2y) and 63 FB (mean age = 20y, SD = 3.4y) volunteers. The test for the BESS was taken for Non-Dominant Leg (NDL) and Dominant Leg (DL). Descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests were carried out. The study revealed that all the combinations of correlation between Firm Surface (FS) and Foam Surface (FOS) were statistically significant at p<.05. Test of age, height, and weight of the PS and FB group indicated significant differences between the groups in these variables. Surface firmness is less effective in evaluating for persons with visual impairments.

Highlights

Three systems that regulate upright standing posture in human are visual, vestibular and somatosensory (Aydoğ, Aydoğ, Cakci, & Doral, 2006)
The Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) score in the nondominant leg and dominant leg support for partially sightedness (PS) and full blindness (FB) groups were shown in table 3
The results from the data indicate that tandem stance (TS) leads to fewer number of errors irrespective of leg dominance and surface condition, but with a large variance within the values

Summary

Introduction

Three systems that regulate upright standing posture in human are visual, vestibular and somatosensory (Aydoğ, Aydoğ, Cakci, & Doral, 2006). It was suggested that optimal postural stability in a variety of situations requires information from all the three sensory systems (Horak, Diener & Nashner, 1989). It is known that among persons with visual impairment parts of the visual cortex are activated by other types of sensory stimulations in a cross-modal manner (Cohen et al, 1997; Theoret, Merabet, & Pascual, 2004). It means that some of the visual cortex would respond to sensory input from other remaining senses. These lead to the incorrect distribution of muscular force throughout the body which precipitates postural

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