The Researched Opinions on Research: Visually impaired people and visual impairment research

Abstract

In this paper, we describe our research review, commissioned by 'the Gift of Thomas Pocklington', into the opinions of visually impaired people on visual impairment research. We interviewed 37 visually impaired people across Central Region, Scotland. Our findings suggest areas of need for visual impairment research, both concerning what is researched and how it is researched. We make recommendations for future research addressing both resource and methodological issues. We suggest increasing resources for recruiting participants and multimedia dissemination (e.g. audio tape, Braille, Moon). Methods may need to be refined to address difficulties in recruiting participants, and to capture the diversity of strengths and needs of visually impaired people. We make three core recommendations that identify the need for research to: respect people's individuality; be practical and action orientated, and contribute to an empowering and emancipatory research agenda. We conclude by reflecting on our role as community psychologists through examining the ideological position we adopted in this study.