INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND INCLUSION FOR THE LOW VISION POPULATION IN SAO PAULO/BRAZIL:
THINKING ACROSS DISCIPLINES

After so many years of social inclusion of the handicapped people, we still have an important exclusion of the visually impaired people, mainly the low vision ones (particularly people with vision between 0,3 and 0,05 in the better eye, not-improvable with glasses, medication or surgery). Many of these low vision people are treated as completely blind ones or non-recognized as visually deficient, depending on the situation. In any of  these cases the patient is not adequately treated or included in a near normal life environment. If people are complete visually deficient (no light perception), they can learn Braille language and have a kind of life based in this new type of communication. In some cases it can be seen, particularly in developing countries, visually deficient people in the low vision range (between 0,3 and 0,05) treated as if they were completely  blind and they are referred to learn Braille, a difficult kind of communication, when they could be helped with special optical or electronic devices for reading at near or far distance, with much better visual rehabilitation results, because vision accounts for 85% of the contact of a person with his/her environment. In other cases, as the low vision patient can have some vision (as previously explained between 0,3 and 0,05) and make some kinds of activities like walking and other simple tasks, people can think these patient are normal  and demand from them more complex performances and think they pretend to be blind, a kind of prejudice that occurs because the general population is not adequately educated to deal with this kind of disorder, the partial visual deficiency or low vision.

It is important that the family, the school, the society and the patient him/herself participate in this process of social inclusion to provide a near normal life for these low vision people. With the aim of reaching this goal, after the deficiency is diagnosed by the ophthalmologist and the optical or electronic device provided for enhancing vision, there must be the collaboration of educators trained for dealing with visual deficiencies and for visual and educational rehabilitation. There must be an interaction between this educator and the patient, the family (for psychological support and continuing the home rehabilitation) and the ophthalmologist for optimizing the use of visual devices for the patient´s daily activities at school, work, leisure or whatsoever. It is also important an interaction between the ophthalmology and design professionals for providing the most ergonomic as possible devices to permit the low vision patient an adequate adaptation to the everyday life. In the University of Sao Paulo/Brazil the Ophthalmology Department of the Medical School initiated a collaboration with members of the Design Department of the Architecture School and developed an optical device that can make reading easier and more comfortable for low vision patients. The method of work was based in the integration of knowledge, in thinking across disciplines as well as in the participative observation of the patients´ needs in their life. This group purposed an ergonomic equipment to permit a better visual performance of the patients, based on their needs, aiming their inclusion in an educational, familiar and social life as normal as possible. This is only the beginning of an interaction that will continue, with the goal of developing other optic and electronic devices and even furniture devices as to permit these visually impaired people a more adequate performance in their everyday life.
 
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