Lecture manual. First Asian Pacific Conference on low vision care

Historical Significance: Low vision care had its origins with the advent of various optical magnifying devices beginning in the 1920s that were made by Zeiss and a little later others designed by USA optometrist William Feinbloom in the 1930s. He set up a specialist low vision care optometric practice at that time and wrote several important papers. Australian optometrist Joseph Lederer designed the Lederer lens set in 1954, which attracted great interest as an aid for those with low vision. The British optical firm Keeler Ltd made a comprehensive set of low vision aids in 1955. British optometrist Normal Bier published a book on low vision in 1960. Low vision care gained great impetus with the setting up of multidisciplinary low vision clinics, the most of important of which in Australia was the Kooyong Low Vision Clinic founded in 1972 by the Association for the Blind in co-operation with the Australian College of Optometry and the Department of Ophthalmology in the University of Melbourne. This clinic served as an international model. Ian Bailey, one of the authors of this lecture manual, was the founding and leading optometrist in the this clinic. This manual reflects the novel methods of providing low vision care in a multi-disciplinary setting that were developed through research and experience working in the Kooyong Low Vision Clinic by Bailey and a little later by Alan Johnston and Jan Lovie.