Supporting people with aniridia and their Families
Just Diagnosed? click here
Supporting people with aniridia and their Families
Just Diagnosed? click here
Aniridia and SportWill my aniridic child play sport?The answer to this question is complicated as, without a disability, individuals have talents and difficulties that cause them to like or dislike sports or a particular sport. Having a visual impairment adds a further dimension into whether or not an individual will like sport or a particular sport, but it will not rule sport out altogether. This is particularly true for a condition like aniridia where the symptoms and level of vision is personal each person with aniridia. What may cause difficulty?To better understand how low vision effects a persons ability to participate in sport, it is helpful to understand what elements of vision can be helpful to sportsmen and women. dynamic visual acuity:This is the ability to clearly see objects while you and/or the objects are moving fast. This can be difficult in people have low vision as they may not be able to see balls or or other sports objects until they are very close. Eye tracking:This is the ability to follow an object without moving your head. This is difficult for people who have nystagmus, as they cannot control the tracking of their eyes, and people with a dominant eye and or strabismus, as the head would have to move a lot more to compensate for the lack of vision in the opposite eye. Eye-Hand-Body Coordination:This the ability to match hand and body movements precisely to visual information. People with low vision find this difficult. Peripheral vision:This is important in team sports in which you need to know what your team mates are doing. Optic nerve hypoplasia and glaucoma can both cause peripheral vision damage in people with aniridia. Depth perception:This involves making spatial judgments, including how far away an object or person is to you. In order to view 3D stereo images you must have two eyes that work together as a coordinated team. Ambloypia and low vision make it difficult or impossible to see in 3D and therefore are not able to make these judgements as quickly or as precisely as people with 3D vision. Even without aniridia or any other eye condition, often sports men and women go to sports vision doctors who help them improve these visual skills. Some or all of these difficulties can add another dimension to the individuals ability to play sport, often enthusiasm for a particular sport encourages the individual to find alternative strategies to enable to achieve the same or near same results. To encourage any child to take up a sport you should match abilities. When a visually impaired child is in mainstream schools they are often in physical education classes with children with better visual ability than them and this means they are always at a disadvantage and do not see themselves winning against their non-disabled peers. However, their are many clubs and organisations for visually impaired people in sport, and this may be away to match abilities and encourage visually impaired children into sport when they are otherwise discouraged. (Details of blind sports organisations are below) Many people with aniridia can and do play sport. There are at least two Paralympians with aniridia. they are Trish Zorn who used to Swim for the USA Gerrard Gosens who is Marathon runner from Queensland, Australia. He won gold at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics More generally people with aniridia participate in Swimming, LINKS Wales Council for the Blind Sports and Leisure Development Project Sports for Visually Impaired Children and their Families National Capital Visually Impaired Sports Association (canada) Australian Blind Golfers Association Benefits of Sport Judo for Blind and Visually Impaired People By Neil Ohlenkamp |