Influence of Physical Activity and Sport on the Inclusion of People with Visual Impairment: A Systematic Review

Abstract

People with visual impairment have greater difficulty in accessing physical activity and sport, and a lack of social interaction is also associated with a risk of exclusion. Work is currently being done to include people with visual impairment through physical activity and sport. However, there is a lack of studies examining the status and overall effectiveness of interventions in the pre- and post-COVID stage. This study aimed to provide solid evidence on the characteristics and effectiveness of interventions for the inclusion of people with visual impairment through physical activity and sport in order to address the need for dissemination on this topic. The bibliographic search was carried out with the words “Physical activity”, “Physical exercise”, “Sport”, “Physical training”, “visual disability”, “visual impairment” and “inclusion” in the databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar from 2018 to 2021.The article selection process was according to the PRISMA protocol with a final selection of nine articles. The main results highlighted that the programmes improve the perception of people with disabilities, increase social skills and health and increase the social importance of people with disabilities in the social environment. Among the most generalised conclusions were the need for specialised training, the need for social inclusion and participation of people with visual impairment in their environments and increased physical activity.

Sports Achievements Of Visually Impaired Students And Its Impacts On Their Psychological Aspects

“…If someone has good self-confidence, it will be easy to achieve, and vice versa. If someone gets achievements, then a good sense of selfconfidence will arise in him (Alcaraz-Rodríguez et al, 2021;Carson et al, 2017;Mirandola et al, 2019). It is the same as previous research indicated that many visually impaired children manage to achieve good intellectual achievement if the environment provides opportunities and motivation for visually impaired children to develop (Buckley et al, 2021).…”

The association between visual impairment and mental disorders

“…Therefore, different levels of physical function limitations are expected in patients with VI depending on the severity of the underlying ocular pathology 51 . It should be noted that the regression coefficient of the physical subscale in the crude model was higher than the adjusted models; the confounding effect of age is probably the main reason considering that aging itself is associated with a decreased physical activity due to a decrease in physical strength 52 . In our study, social activities did not have a statistically significant association with VI in the final linear regression model.…”

A tale of two stories: COVID-19 and disability. A critical scoping review of the literature on the effects of the pandemic among athletes with disabilities and para-athletes

“…This was done iteratively until “search saturation”, that is to say, no new relevant articles could be found. Existing reviews on similar or related topics, if existing ( Alcaraz-Rodríguez et al, 2021 ), were scanned to increase the chance of including all relevant studies. Further, specific target journals were hand-searched for relevant studies.…”