Now you see me - what you might not spot when coaching visually impaired riders
Deep in discussion with August during a riding lesson I've been involved in coaching visually impaired (VI) riders from the very beginning of my RDA career, and the idea of being a spare, helpful, trustworthy set of eyes for someone on a horse has never stopped being interesting to me. By pure chance, the first three VI riders I worked with to any depth were all totally blind - 0% vision. Was it, therefore, a surprise to me that the vast majority of those registered blind have some kind of vision? Yes. It really was. It's hard to find a specific number for those with 0% vision. Some sources suggest 10-15% for the USA; others point to a figure of under 5% for the UK population. The figure given to me by one of my VI riders was 7%. What I do know is that the first ten years or so of my RDA experiences were totally anomalous, and I was working with individuals who represented less than a tenth of the VI community. Visual impairment and sight loss is a huge spectrum, which acc...
