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Training teachers of learners with visual impairment (VI) emphasise instrumental skills such as curriculum adaptation and assistive technology, at times ignoring anxieties and attitudes within teachers surrounding disability. South Africa's education system faces a huge backlog in VI teacher training, which is being addressed by intensive short courses developed through the Teacher Empowerment for Disability Inclusion (TEDI) project. With only 5 days of contact, hard choices must be made regarding what teachers most need to prepare for the VI learner. The Authors felt that personal and attitudinal shifts (in teachers entirely new to VI) were pivotal. Besides 'harder' skills, trainees took part (as audience) in a daily panel discussion by four academically successful VI graduates, with experiences of both inclusive and special education. The panel strategy had five aims: (i) counter stereotypes by showcasing high-achieving VI persons; (ii) provide humanising, first-hand experience of VI; (iii) raise and digest difficult emotions to do with VI; (iv) model a sense of mutual acceptance between learners and teachers and (v) add humour and lightness to difficult issues. This paper presents qualitative data on the outcomes of these aims, based on written submissions by panellists, and questionnaire and focus group material from trainees.

This study employed a cross-sectional, qualitative individual interview methodology to explore South African women with physical disabilities' experiences of intimate partner and sexual violence, inclusive of non-consensual and coerced sexual intercourse. For the participants, disability was a factor that intersected with gender norms to create vulnerability to abuse, and that patriarchal ideologies constructing how women should perform their gendered roles in marriage or sexual partnerships, as well as disability stigma, exacerbated this vulnerability. It is important to develop understandings of the different risk factors for violence – at the individual level and in the context of dyadic relationships – to develop programming to better support women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention to online delivery of teaching and assessment within the higher education sector. This article will reflect on the laboratory assessment of chemistry to undergraduate students on a pharmaceutical science program in the UK. With students prohibited from accessing laboratory environments, associated assessments focused on the interpretation of data and simulating the experience of viewing data produced elsewhere. Aspects to promote the assessment of process skills were included, and it was found that the use of data sets for individual interpretation helped to mitigate "oversharing". A purposeful community of inquiry requires further consideration to maximize opportunities for peer collaborative discussions that occur within the laboratory environment.

This paper presents findings from a study on blindness discourses found in South African non-profit organisations that provide rehabilitation services to visually impaired adults. The paper investigates what the public relations materials of these organisations communicate about blindness. It also considers the ideological assumptions that blindness discourses reinforce and embed in rehabilitation practice. The primary focus is a discourse analytic review conducted on a sample of organisation public facing material. The findings comprise three clusters of assumptions, with concomitant enactments in practice. These are i) third-person alliances around the blind subject and a resulting objectification of service users ii) 'journey discourse' which prohibits the expression of complex disability experiences and iii) polarised blindness fantasies which promote othering and prescribe acceptable ways of being for blind subjects. This paper questions what might be imparted to blind persons at a symbolic level through rehabilitative practices. This article explores the ways that blindness and blind persons are represented on the websites of organisations that provide visual impairment rehabilitation services in South Africa. These representations affect the way that society views visually impaired people, and the way that visually impaired people feel about themselves. Organisation websites describe visually impaired people in ways that make it seem as though they play little active role in the rehabilitation process. The idea that rehabilitation is a journey from dependence and depression to independence and self-acceptance might make it difficult for rehabilitation service users to express ongoing feelings of grief and loss. There is a need for more focus on interdependence in rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation organisations must think carefully about what their public relations materials communicate to society about blindness and blind persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, increasing availability and popularity of designer benzodiazepines (DBZDs) constitutes a primary threat to public health. To assess this threat, the biological activity/potency of DBZDs was investigated using in silico studies. Specific Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) models were developed in Forge™ for the prediction of biological activity (IC50) on the γ‐aminobutyric acid A receptor (GABA‐AR) of previously identified classified and unclassified DBDZs. A set of new potential ligands resulting from scaffold hopping studies conducted with MOE® was also evaluated. Two generated QSAR models (i.e. 3D‐field QSAR and RVM) returned very good performance statistics (r2 = 0.98 [both] and q2 = 0.75 and 0.72, respectively). The DBZDs predicted to be the most active were flubrotizolam, clonazolam, pynazolam and flucotizolam, consistently with what reported in literature and/or drug discussion fora. The scaffold hopping studies strongly suggest that replacement of the pendant phenyl moiety with a five‐membered ring could increase biological activity and highlight the existence of a still unexplored chemical space for DBZDs. QSAR could be of use as a preliminary risk assessment model for (newly) identified DBZDs, as well as scaffold hopping for the creation of computational libraries that could be used by regulatory bodies as support tools for scheduling procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a routine procedure, a number of derivatives of the benzo[4,5]isothiazolo[2,3-α] pyrazine-6,6-dioxide ring system have been synthesized from readily available starting materials. A series of chalcones were synthesized, which were subsequently reacted with chlorosulfonic acid to generate chalcone sulfonyl chlorides. The chalcone sulfonyl chlorides were then treated with bromine to generate dibromo chalcone sulfonyl chlorides. These were subsequently reacted with 1,2-diaminopropane and 2-methyl-1,2-diaminopropane in boiling ethanol resulting in compounds 2-10 and 11-19 respectively, in 12-80% yields. The products were characterized by spectral analysis and the definitive structure of compound 11 was determined by X-ray crystallography. The synthesized compounds were screened for potential antibacterial properties against Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris and Staphylococcus aureus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A pre-conference workshop that investigated the experiences and needs of PhD candidates and early career researchers in disability studies in Africa was held as part of the proceedings of the African Network for Evidence to Action in Disability (AfriNEAD) 7th Conference in November 2023., Objectives: To determine how the existing structures in AfriINEAD can be leveraged to support emerging African disability researchers. This article documents this event and summarises the key findings from the discussions that took place., Method: The workshop included presentations from leading scholars in health professions education, panel discussions with PhD candidates and early career researchers, and small group discussions on what is needed to support emerging researchers., Results: Disability studies was positioned by participants as not only an academic exercise but also a deeply personal pursuit, requiring introspection and conscientisation, with which they felt they needed support. There are also specific ethical concerns related to doing research work with persons with disabilities, which need to be prioritised in postgraduate education in disability studies. The needs identified by participants are summarised as: (1) mentorship, (2) networking, and (3) funding., Conclusion: We suggest that the development of African disability scholars and scholarship requires an African ethical approach, which prioritises humanity, community and reciprocity., Contribution: African disability studies scholars are well-placed to disrupt ableism in academic, medical and social spheres, as well as hierarchies within academia, which limit development, mutual growth and respect., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article., (© 2024. The Authors.)

Purpose: Peer support has been identified as an important aspect of rehabilitation for visually impaired adults. However, there is a limited exploration in rehabilitation studies literature of the identity-related impact of these interventions, both at an individual and collective level. Through attending to the discourses on blindness, well-being, and social inclusion that circulate in organization cultures, this article considers the role that peer support plays in forming "blind communities" with particular characteristics, and what these communities might model about life with blindness, both to newly blind persons and to society., Research Method: Foucauldian discourse analysis was conducted on semi-structured interviews with 18 visual impairment rehabilitation service users and eight rehabilitation practitioners at four organizations providing services in the Western Cape, South Africa., Results: Formal peer support is lacking in the sampled organizations, suggesting that relational aspects are not a priority in rehabilitation practice. The formal and informal peer support that does exist in these services is shadowed by largely negative sociocultural beliefs about blindness. Participants described a culture of comparison, othering, and surveillance within which, the article suggests, they are unable to explore and embrace authentic and positive blind identities. This has implications for both individual and collective empowerment., Conclusions: Greater attention must be paid to both rehabilitation practitioner training and the design and implementation of rehabilitation services to the identity-level impact of rehabilitation. This is essential to develop services that promote individual and collective empowerment and that respond to the multilayered practical, social, and psychoemotional needs of blind adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

People with visual impairment face significant material challenges to access and inclusion in South Africa. These are in large part rooted in and supported by prejudiced assumptions about the needs, nature and capabilities of this group. The cultural and psychological face of oppression needs to be attended to. To this end, this viewpoint brings together the work of three visually impaired scholars in three key areas pertaining to the promotion of the inclusion and citizenship of visually impaired persons in South Africa. These areas are education; rehabilitation; and social inclusion and visibility. This work argues that undoing lifelong exclusion requires examining how disablism is embedded in the very fabric of our societies and operational at various levels: material, administrative, cultural and relational., Competing Interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare., (Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s).)