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Information: a new paradigm for research into our understanding of blindness?

University of Birmingham, UK, m.j.tobin{at}btinternet.com

'Information' is proposed as an over-arching concept to guide researchers as they seek to investigate the educational, psychological, social and other challenges posed by blindness. Examples from published research reports and from commonly observed behavioural phenomena at various stages of the individual's development are invoked to support the case that all delays and barriers experienced by blind people have as their causation the lack, the inadequacy or the inaccessibility of information. The notion of information is rarely explicitly referred to in research reports and is scarcely ever commented upon by carers and professional practitioners, but the argument to be made here is that its existence is implicit. If the usefulness of the proposition is acknowledged, the 'information model' can provide a means for designing and unifying future research programmes. Finally, it is claimed that casting the model into a technical and more abstract form serves to bring out its generality as a possible theory for devising basic research and teaching programmes.

Key Words: development • education • training • visual impairment

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