FAMOUS PERSONALITIES WITH

DISABILITY
(VISUAL IMPAIRMENT)

A Requirement in

SPED 100: Introduction to Special Education

Submitted to: Professor Ellana A. Abedin

Submitted by: Reynaldo, Jr. L. Colegado

 Visual Impairment Overview

Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment or vision loss, is a

decreased ability to see to a degree that causes problems not fixable by usual
means, such as glasses. Some also include those who have a decreased ability
to see because they do not have access to glasses or contact lenses.[1] Visual
impairment is often defined as a best corrected visual acuity of worse than
either 20/40 or 20/60. The term blindness is used for complete or nearly
complete vision loss. Visual impairment may cause people difficulties with
normal daily activities such as driving, reading, socializing, and walking.

Famous Foreign Personalities with Visual Impairment

Homer is the name ascribed by the

ancient Greeks to the legendary author of
the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems
which are the central works of ancient Greek
literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan
War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by
a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on
a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the
warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The
Odyssey focuses on the journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall
of Troy.

Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most

widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central
coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider them
legends.
 The Homeric Question—concerning by whom, when, where and under
what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed—continues to be
debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One
holds that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are the works
of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the
result of a process of working and re-working by many contributors, and that
"Homer" is best seen as a label for an entire tradition

It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point

around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. The poems are in Homeric Greek,
also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of
features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the
predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the
poems were originally transmitted orally.

From antiquity until the present day, the influence of the Homeric epics
on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous
works of literature, music, art and film.[9] The Homeric epics were the greatest
influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply
the one who "has taught Greece" – ten Hellada pepaideuken.

Louis Braille (1809-1852) was from a

small town called Coupvray, near
Paris—he was born on January 4 in
1809. Louis became blind by accident,
when he was 3 years old. Deep in his
Dad's harness workshop, Louis tried to
be like his Dad, but it went very wrong;
he grabbed an awl, a sharp tool for
making holes, and the tool slid and hurt his eye. The wound got infected, and
the infection spread, and soon, Louis was blind in both eyes.

All of a sudden, Louis needed a new way to learn. He stayed at his old
school for two more years, but he couldn't learn everything just by listening.
Things were looking up when Louis got a scholarship to the Royal Institution
for Blind Youth in Paris, when he was 10. But even there, most of the teachers
just talked at the students. The library had 14 huge books with raised letters
that were very hard to read. Louis was impatient.

Then in 1821, a former soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school.
Barbier shared his invention called "night writing," a code of 12 raised dots
that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without even
having to speak. Unfortunately, the code was too hard for the soldiers, but not
for 12-year-old Louis!

Louis trimmed Barbier's 12 dots into 6, ironed out the system by the
time he was 15, then published the first-ever braille book in 1829. But did he
stop there? No way! In 1837, he added symbols for math and music. But since
the public was skeptical, blind students had to study braille on their own. Even
at the Royal Institution, where Louis taught after he graduated, braille wasn't
taught until after his death. Braille began to spread worldwide in 1868, when a
group of British men, now known as the Royal National Institute for the Blind,
took up the cause.

Now practically every country in the world uses braille. Braille books
have double-sided pages, which saves a lot of space. Braille signs help blind
people get around in public spaces. And, most important, blind people can
communicate independently, without needing print. Louis proved that if you
have the motivation, you can do incredible things.
 Famous Filipino Personalities with Visual Impairment

Micheal Barredo, 61, was a varsity

athlete in basketball, volleyball, football, track
and chess during his elementary, high school
and undergraduate years at La Salle. At the
age of 24 in 1979, he figured in a car accident
that took away his eyesight. Barredo smashed
into a parked car at an unlit portion of the
street in front of Rizal Memorial. It was 2 in
the morning and Barredo overtook from the right in a hurry to get home. His
head banged against the windshield of his car which was a total wreck. His
right eye was beyond repair and for a while, doctors tried to save the vision in
his left eye. Barredo underwent at least 10 operations, including three in the
US, to save the eye but to no avail.

On March 24, 2001, Roselle

Ambubuyog became the first visually-
impaired Filipina to emerge as summa cum
laude graduate of the Ateneo de Manila
University (ADMU).

Born on January 12,1980,

Ambubuyog, totally blind since age six,
finished her bachelor of science degree, major in mathematics with flying
colors. She was also chosen as class valedictorian chosen among all summa
cum laude graduates.

She earlier graduated valedictorian from her elementary school and, four
years later, was again valedictorian of her high school batch.
 As a scholar of ADMU, the school bought Ambubuyog a Braille
Translation Software that converts encoded or scanned text to computer as
well as a Braille printer that produces hard copy Braille to make the exam
questionnaires, lecture notes, and other classroom materials. Also bought for
her was the talking calculator so she can hear the numbers while she
computes.

Ambubuyog also won all the other awards possible for a graduating
Ateneo student: the president's award for service and excellence as most
outstanding individual; the St. Ignatius Award for Outstanding Scholar, and
the departmental award for mathematics.

Outside the university she has received the Jose Rizal Model Student
award from the Knights of Rizal Supreme Council and one of the science
awards from Bank of the Philippine Islands.