Taking Class Seriously

This article critically analyzes the human rights perspective upon what has emerged as one of the most significant socioeconomic and political challenges confronting many millions of people residing within high-income, liberal-democratic societies: rising poverty and socioeconomic inequality. This article argues that international and domestic human rights law and the social and political imaginaries of the wider human rights community largely fail to adequately diagnose and effectively respond to poverty and inequality within high-income, liberal-democratic societies. As a political and ethical doctrine founded upon a normative commitment to social justice, human rights should be taking the lead in efforts to condemn, understand, and develop responses to the poverty and inequality which blight the lives of many millions of people within many of the world's most affluent and, allegedly, most "liberal” societies. Human rights law has historically not done so. We, as a community, have not done so. This article offers a specific explanation for this continuing failure, by focusing upon the absence of any concerted recognition of or engagement with social class as it contributes to and compounds our exposure to poverty and inequality. Human rights remain largely blind to the many ways in which social class is intricately connected to poverty and inequality. The human rights community within high-income, liberal-democratic societies characteristically fails to take class seriously. Building upon previous writing in this area, this article explains why class is rarely recognized or engaged with by the human rights community. This article also sets out the basis for how we might begin the task of overcoming this highly damaging class blindness, to set the stage for what the author asserts as an urgent need if human rights is to provide the kind of political and ethical leadership required to effectively engage with poverty and inequality in affluent societies: the degentrification of human rights.

Vision impairment is common in non-hospitalised patients with post-COVID-19 syndrome.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Vision-related problems can be part of longstanding sequelae after COVID-19 and hamper the return to work and daily activities. Knowledge about symptoms, visual, and oculomotor dysfunctions is however scarce, particularly for non-hospitalised patients. Clinically applicable tools are needed as support in the assessment and determination of intervention needs. BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to evaluate vision-related symptoms, assess visual and oculomotor function, and to test the clinical assessment of saccadic eye movements and sensitivity to visual motion in non-hospitalised post-COVID-19 outpatients. The patients (n = 38) in this observational cohort study were recruited from a post-COVID-19 clinic and had been referred for neurocognitive assessment. METHODS: Patients who reported vision-related symptoms reading problems and intolerance to movement in the environment were examined. A structured symptom assessment and a comprehensive vision examination were undertaken, and saccadic eye movements and visual motion sensitivity were assessed. RESULTS: High symptom scores (26-60%) and prevalence of visual function impairments were observed. An increased symptom score when reading was associated with less efficient saccadic eye movement behaviour (p < 0.001) and binocular dysfunction (p = 0.029). Patients with severe symptoms in visually busy places scored significantly higher on the Visual Motion Sensitivity Clinical Test Protocol (p = 0.029). CONCLUSION: Vision-related symptoms and impairments were prevalent in the study group. The Developmental Eye Movement Test and the Visual Motion Sensitivity Clinical Test Protocol showed promise for clinical assessment of saccadic performance and sensitivity to movement in the environment. Further study will be required to explore the utility of these tools.

Blindness (review)

Before COVID, directors often deployed such elements to disrupt traditional theatre by staging site-specific pieces or having actors lip-sync recordings of absent others. Despite being forced to live in appalling conditions in an abandoned mental hospital with countless infected strangers, this resourceful woman never lost her vision or compassion. A central intercom announced that leaving the hospital would result in death.

The invisible lockdown: reflections on disability during the time of the Coronavirus pandemic

In this autoethnography, BW and I explore the various ways in which my experiences of lockdown during the Coronavirus pandemic are not altogether different from my everyday experiences as a visually impaired person. Further, we make sense of my experience that, notwithstanding the social world's expression of feelings about lockdown and social distancing, my own reactions to disability-imposed lockdown remain unrecognized, invalidated and unseen. Making sense of these experiences of invisibility is essential, since it is only when our experiences are truly contemplated by others that we can have the hope of being fully known. In this paper, my co-author and I explain the various ways in which my experiences of lockdown during the Coronavirus pandemic are not altogether different from my everyday experiences as a visually impaired person;I provide examples to illustrate that there are anxiety-provoking challenges lurking outside my home;Yet, giving in to these anxieties and being confined to my home is too painful to give in to;While my everyday experiences are, too some extent, what the world is experiencing at the current moment with social distancing and lockdown, my feelings about disability-imposed lockdown remain unrecognized, invalidated and unseen;It is important to voice and make known these realities, For it is only when our experiences are truly seen—when we are completely known—that we can move towards self-acceptance.

Good Learning and Epistemic Transformation

This study explores a liberatory epistemic virtue that is suitable for good learning as a form of liberating socially situated epistemic agents toward ideal virtuousness. First, I demonstrate that the weak neutralization of epistemically bad stereotypes is an end of good learning. Second, I argue that weak neutralization represents a liberatory epistemic virtue, the value of which derives from liberating us as socially situated learners from epistemic blindness to epistemic freedom. Third, I explicate two distinct forms of epistemic transformation: constitutive and causal epistemic transformation. I argue that compared with the ideal conception of epistemic virtue, constitutive epistemic transformation that involves good learning has a transcendent value in light of agents constantly renewing their default epistemic status toward ideal virtuousness.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease After the Second Dosage of The Novel Pfizer-Biontech Messenger Ribonucleic Acid (Mrna) COVID-19 Vaccination: A Case Report

Uncommon, rapidly progressing, and eventually fatal neurological condition called human prion disease. While most occurrences are sporadic, many can be acquired or inherited. In the current study, we focus on the case of a 63-year-old man who initially had vision problems then exhibits difficulty using his right side for daily activities and who begins to experience frequent falls with gait instability about a week after receiving the second dosage of the novel Pfizer-BioNTech messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccination. Confidential findings confirmed the fatal diagnoses of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease following a thorough study.

A community-led outreach programme to improve eye care service delivery in Sri Lanka. (Special Issue: Community engagement in eye care: working with and for communities.)

According to the most recent national census on blindness, nearly 100,000 persons in Sri Lanka over the age of 40 are thought to be blind from untreated cataracts. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the fact that more than 80% of the population lives in rural areas, access to eye care is currently limited. The Association of Community Ophthalmologists of Sri Lanka (SLACO) has been providing free outreach eye care visits on a regular basis in rural regions for the past five to six years in an effort to solve the issue. These visits primarily serve to provide patients with free reading glasses and referrals for complimentary cataract surgery. SLACO members volunteer their services without payment. After registration, individuals had their eyes tested and their distance and near visual acuity were measured. As walk-in patients were accepted, the community ophthalmologist from SLACO assessed 143 patients and gave 120 of them near-vision glasses. 43 patients with operable cataracts had pre-operative evaluations (ECG, fasting blood sugar, and blood pressure check) that day. Because there was a two-year waiting list for the three closest government eye units, SLACO arranged for them to be sent to a charity eye hospital in Colombo.

People with visual impairment in outward-facing work: Developing a tool to measure employer attitudes.

BACKGROUND: Over the years, persons with disabilities have suffered unjustifiably due to a low employment rate, largely the result of unsupportive and negative attitude from employers. Such attitudes are exacerbated during periods of economic stress, with a case par excellence being the current COVID-19 pandemic. Prior studies have addressed common concerns of employers within the workplace. However, the dimensions of these concerns extend beyond the internal working environment, to the outward-facing work environment, involving interactions with customers and suppliers. These concerns have not, thus far, been properly addressed. OBJECTIVE: To develop the Service from People With Visual Impairment (SPVI) psychometric measure, a 6-item employers' attitude assessment tool. METHODS: This study is based on 1,036 questionnaires collected using Online Panel Data (OPD), from managers who have hiring authority. We performed Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) for discriminant and convergent validity. Finally, we present an empirical model comprising a stable single factor and establish predictive validity using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). RESULTS: CFA showed good fit to the observed data; CMIN/DF = 1.94, p > 0.05, CFI = 1, TLI = 0.99, NFI = 1, RMSEA = 0.03. SEM showed good fit; CMIN/DF = 1.91, CFI = 1, TLI = 0.99, NFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.03. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the instrument could become a pragmatic tool to assess employer attitudes to employ people with visual impairment or blindness due to external work environment concerns. The tool is relevant to a wide range of circumstances, including economic downturns. Practical considerations are discussed.

Blindness, Excrement, and Abjection in the Theatre: ASTR Presidential Address, 30 October 2021

As most of my human contact became restricted to the Zoom screen in spring 2020, I discovered a serious limit to my capacity for looking. I also began finding it difficult to read. A ten-month headache taught me to stop taking ibuprofen and learn to manage tensions around my eyes and head as well as to shift roughly half of my reading to screenreaders and audio books. The need to restructure my own practices of seeing refocused my interest in theatre's engagement of the senses at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed people's ability to smell, prompted them to hoard toilet paper, and created a U.S. boom in bidet purchases. These personal and cultural developments coincided with revived metaphors of blindness on the pandemic stage. This article begins with a brief discussion of The Blind, an “immersive audio/visual meditation journey” that Here Arts Center produced in 2021, and then centers on Blindness, the “socially distanced sound installation” produced by the Donmar Warehouse in 2020 followed by an international tour. I wonder at the reiteration of blindness as a tragic trope, seemingly unaffected by progress in disability rights, equity, and inclusion. I wonder at the appeal of wielding any contagious illness as metaphor during a global pandemic. My analysis turns particularly upon the relation between blindness and excrement in José Saramago's novel Blindness and the effect of cleansing the theatrical installation of any shit as well as the even more surprising choice to eliminate the voices of the blind characters. A detour through medieval French farces that link blindness and excrement reveals submerged tropes at play in these performative responses to fear of diminished capacity and diminished control—everything that individuals and societies cast out in order to maintain what we call health, whether literal or metaphorical.

Tweenager Computer Visual Syndrome Due to Tablets and Laptops during the Postlockdown COVID-19 Pandemic and the Influence on the Binocular and Accommodative System.

The aim of our study was to compare computer visual syndrome (CVS) in a tweenager student population who use tablets and laptops only to play versus CVS in tweenagers who use these digital devices at school to study, in addition to playing. The tests performed were a validated survey for children for the detection of CVS and accommodative and vergence tests. The CVS item questionnaire was divided into four main groups based on questions concerning the following: (I) the digital device usage time, (II) musculoskeletal and ergonomic nature, (III) visual symptoms, and (IV) ocular surface symptoms. The high-demand digital device group showed worse punctuation in all item groups. From the optometric perspective, when the subjects were classified according to the CVS, high-demand participants presented a clear tendency to exophoria with statistically significant differences in distance vision (-1.94 ± 4.48 Δ) and near vision (-5.78 ± 8.62 Δ) (p < 0.01). Our results establish a relationship between the increased use of electronic devices and computer vision syndrome in the preadolescent population. In addition, this situation is related to the presence of visual, accommodative, and binocular dysfunctions that could affect the efficiency of the visual system.

Visual impairment service review

Aims: To assess the quality of documentation of patients with a visual impairment within a neurosurgery department to see if they have a corresponding vision alert within their medical notes. Methods: Retrospective case note analysis over 3 years of neurosurgical patients diagnosed with a space occupying lesion involving the anterior fossa near the optic apparatus was conducted. Post-surgical clinical assessment validated by formal visual assessment revealed 56 patients had a visual impairment diagnosis. Visual acuity and visual field mean deviations in the best eye were studied, along with the documentation of a vision alert. A total of nine patients did not meet the inclusion criteria and were removed from the study. Results: Out of 47 patients, four were found to have a severe sight impairment. Only 11 (23.40%) patients had a vision alert on their medical records. Out of the 47 patients with a visual impairment, three patients certified as sight impaired and severely sight impaired (75%) did not have a vision alert on their medical record. Conclusions: Although visual impairment was common in this study population, most patients had useful vision. Documentation to alert clinicians and carers about visual impairment was poor and needs improvement.

Sudden onset of decreased vision following Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 infection: a case report

We described a 52-year-old male patient with COVID-19 who had sudden decreased vision in his left eye in the second week of his illness. No occlusion thrombotic vein or hemorrhagic spots in retina have been identified in ophthalmoscopy procedures, clinical examination and optical coherence tomography. In one month his vision became normal without any treatment. We could not find the exact mechanisms of one-sided decreased vision in the COVID-19 patient, but this problem should be considered by physicians because of the importance of loss of vision.

Self-localization and interpersonal proximity detection for public transit accessibility and safety

Public transit stations and hubs are difficult to navigate for people with visual impairments. Moreover, public transit has been affected disproportionately by the social distancing requirements consequent to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the objective of this dissertation to provide a technology for addressing these concerns in the frame of a mobile app named RouteMe2. The technology provides micro- routing and guidance to visually impaired travelers through complex routes in transit hubs. This work also includes the study to monitor the distance between the travelers inside the bus for social distancing application. Reducing the risk of air-born viral infections by social distancing can contribute to improving the overall safety of the public transit.The key enablers of this technology are sufficiently accurate self-localization and micro-routing as well as effective communication of the contextual spatiotemporal information with the visually impaired users. The accuracy of the self- localization in the outdoor environments is challenged by poor Global Positioning System (GPS) reception due to tall nearby buildings that may obscure view of one or more satellites - a.k.a shading. Shading is very common in urban environments, and is a major cause of GPS failure. In order to mitigate the effect of shading, I statistically fuse the signals received from GPS as well as a small number of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons. I further pair the statistical fusion with a Bayes discrete filter tracker to increase the self-localization accuracy. Experiments were conducted at San Jose Diridon light rail station to quantitatively assess the performance of the resulting system.I have designed and implemented certain features and functionalities of RouteMe2 to provide effective communication of the in-context spatio-temporal information with visually impaired users while they use the app. I leveraged our previously published focus group study conducted with visually impaired people as well as reviewing the user interface of the existing related apps to improve the user experience of RouteMe2 the detail of which is presented.I further assess the ability of two RSSI-based methods at detecting interpersonal distances shorter than 1 or 2 meters. One method uses the power received from the smartphone carried by another person. The other method measures the disparity in the power received by the two smartphones from one or more fixed BLE beacons. The results show that use of the RSSI disparity enables discrimination measures that are as good or better than using the RSSI received from another smartphone. I demonstrate the potential of a system that uses BLE beacons, placed inside a vehicle, to localize a passenger within the length of the vehicle with an accuracy better than 1 meter. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Profile of infectious conjunctivitis at Garoua Regional Hospital

Introduction: Infectious conjunctivitis is a frequent condition in ophthalmology consultations. The evolutionary mode, the contagious character and the socio-economic and epidemiological stakes especially during the current period of world health crisis with the coronavirus disease are the reasons for this study. The aim of this work is to describe the epidemiological, clinical and therapeutic profile of infectious conjunctivitis during the study period in order to improve management. Materials and methods: This retrospective, descriptive and analytical study concerned patients examined between March 1st, 2019, and March 1st, 2021, in the ophthalmology department of the regional hospital of Garoua in northern Cameroon. Patients of all ages who presented with conjunctivitis suspected of infectious origin were included. To define the causes of conjunctival infections, we relied solely on clinical findings. The following variables were analyzed for each case: age, sex, symptoms, contact, laterality, character of signs, aetiology and type of treatment received, class of antibiotics administered, duration and cost of treatment. All patients with incomplete records and non-infectious conjunctivitis were excluded.

Assessment of residual effects and consequences of COVID-19 in elderly and senile people in Shymkent

The first cases of COVID-19 in Kazakhstan began to be registered in March 2020. and by mid-July, according to official data, almost 60 thousand cases were already registered, including 373 fatal (0.6%). Understanding the true burden of the disease is important for strengthening the public health system and timely correction of quarantine and mitigation measures in the modern world. The name of the COVID-19 infection appeared due to the English-language abbreviation left-pointing-double-angle Coronavirus Disease 2019 right-pointing-double-angle . Most of the patients with COVID-19 fully recover. However, some of them have residual phenomena-shortness of breath with light physical exertion, a slight cough, pain and discomfort in the shoulder blades, deterioration of heart function, lack of smell and taste, decreased vision, increased fatigue, insomnia, menstrual cycle disorders, hair loss, depression. Residual phenomena significantly reduce the quality of life of patients, especially in elderly and senile people who have had COVID-19, preventing them from leading a previous lifestyle, impairing their performance and ability to withstand psychoemotional loads. This article evaluates the residual effects and consequences of COVID-19 in elderly and senile people in Shymkent.

Pandemic, Space and Environment in Blindness by José Saramago

Mentioned and praised even by the Noble prize committee, in 1998, Blindness (published in 1995) is a complex novel dealing with the human nature and behaviour in the context of a crisis generated by a sudden and unknown disease. The relevance of reading this book these days, when the entire humanity (and I daresay our planet as an interdependent system) is facing a terrible viral pandemic, is obvious and helpful. The present paper aims to explore José Saramagos novel from a combined geo-ecocritical perspective, emphasizing the interrelatedness of humanity, space, and surrounding environment. The main research questions of this study are: how do humans interact with the places they live in and the ecosphere during a pandemic? and how does a pandemic affect the human behaviour? The geoecocritical approach is due to the interdependence between space and environment, one can hardly explore one of the previously mentioned components of the fictional world without referring to the other. Another aspect that this essay will touch is the alteration of peoples emotions due to the difficulties they face during pandemics and the importance of emotion management in these extreme situations. For the proposed analysis the following methods will be indispensable: close-reading, ecocriticism, geocriticism, and narratology.

Concerns and needs of research participants with visual disabilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic

As COVID-19 is contagious, researchers stop or delay the data collection requiring in-person meetings with research participants. Potential research participants may consciously or unconsciously change the perspective about human subjects research, probably leading to developing reluctance to participate in it. This study aims to advance knowledge of how potential research participants develop, sustain, and/or change their perspective towards human subjects research during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as how to adequately address their needs and concerns. A convenient sample of 28 participants with visual impairments and blindness completed a phone interview. The interview data were analyzed via open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The data analysis resulted in 7 main themes and 10 subthemes that covered the study preparations and procedures. We referred to Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory to discuss a set of facilitators to resolve potential participants' uncertainty and concern about participating in human subjects research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Rational emotive behavior therapy for deafblind individuals with progressive vision loss

Deafblind individuals with progressive visual conditions are presented with the challenge of adjusting to the gradual loss of sight over time and the social, psychological, environmental, and communicative implications relative to that process. Mental health treatment for these individuals is not widely researched due to the lack of homogeneity in the deafblind population;therefore, exploratory studies are necessary. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is an evidence-based treatment that has successfully addressed a range of symptoms in many psychological and medical diagnoses but has not been researched with individuals who are deafblind. In this multiple baseline design study, the researcher delivered a six-week REBT intervention to investigate its effect on symptoms of emotional distress, rational/irrational beliefs, and acceptance and adjustment towards vision loss. The study occurred during a global pandemic (COVID-19) and was therefore conducted via telehealth. The intervention resulted in improvement for two out of the three participants, with little improvement observed in the one participant likely due to confounding variables outside of the study's control. Additionally, results were maintained one month after the intervention was completed. These findings contribute to the research on REBT and support the need for more research using REBT with individuals who are deafblind. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)