Contact: Bob Ratliff
When it comes to assessing the needs of persons with visual challenges, a team of Mississippi State researchers is getting an eyeful.
The university's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision maintains the National Consumer Feedback Network to give persons with impairments a voice in improving the blindness rehabilitation system.
"The purpose of the network is to help us know what persons with visual impairments really want and what helps them," said training associate Katherine E. Evans. "It also is a way for those who receive the services of state and federal rehabilitation programs to express their views and opinions of those programs."
The MSU center maintains a national database of more than 1,000 severely visually impaired individuals, compiled from responses to questionnaires distributed during the past decade. To greatly expand participation, it recently added the Internet.
"In June, we entered the questionnaire on our website," Evans said. "Now, it can be filled out and submitted online."
In addition to the basic contact information, respondents are asked for their preferred reading mediums--regular and large print, cassette tape, computer disk, or Braille. They then are randomly contacted for surveys and other research about blindness and low vision.
"We have many projects that require the valuable information and observations the individuals in the database can provide," Evans said. "This can have a positive impact on people with visual impairments."
As an example, she cited a recent survey in which MSU research scientists Adele Crudden and Lynn McBroom drew on the database to conduct an employment study.
Based on 176 responses, the scientists found that the group perceived three major employment barriers: employers' attitudes, transportation and access to printed materials needed to do their jobs.
McBroom said conducting such surveys would be difficult without the database. "Having access to the database is wonderful for us because we're dealing with a population that's not very large and is hard to locate," she said. "Through it, we have people who say they want to participate in our research, and that's very helpful."