Five Years of Sight Loss

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

Over the last five years I have written personal blog posts detailing my traumatic sight loss journey. To help others better understand the significant changes in my vision I also created a series of interactive simulations (H5P files).

A Heartfelt and Interactive Diary

Open Education Resources (OERs)

As someone who’s created online learning materials professionally for 25 years, it was a unique opportunity for me to communicate and document this hidden disability.

Publishing both the heartfelt blog and H5P content as open education resources (OERs), my hope was to help others going through similar surgeries and challenges.

This brand new ‘Interactive Book’ H5P file consolidates diary entries from the last five years into one bite-sized shareable learning resource.

Interactive Book (H5P exemplar site)

OER publication tally

10 sight loss blog posts
10,840 words / 58 minutes reading time
17 H5P files
- x10 Agamotto
- x2 Image Juxtaposition
- x2 Image Slider
- x1 Interactive Book
- x1 Timeline
- x1 Image Hotspots
97 images

Share, reuse and remix

You can download any of the H5P files via the ‘Reuse’ link in the bottom-left corner.

High-resolution versions of these sight loss photographs and representations are available via this dedicated Flickr album:

‘Sight Loss OERs’ Flickr album

Select images have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and added to relevant Wikipedia pages.

Retinal detachment (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia Commons

Impression of a retinal detachment against a LogMAR chart:
Retinal detachment LogMAR chart B

Impression of a retinal detachment against a bouquet of flowers:
Gas bubble (day 1)

Impression of gas bubble against a bouquet of flowers:
Gas bubble (day 8)

Copyright and licence

The blog text, H5P files and images are all intended to be shared, reused and remixed. To encourage this, I’ve applied a Creative Commons open licence to my own content where the only requirement is to include the following attribution.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

STARs – Visual tests: Nigel – Visual field test (Video)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Different types of white cane (Image Hotspots)

Images and text for the ‘Different types of white cane’ interactive are reproduced here with the kind permission of Sight Scotland.

LogMAR chart

By user Fvasconcellos. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

ETDRS Chart R (.svg)

Disclaimer

Please note these resources are entirely a personal record of my own experiences and have not been verified by any qualified medical professionals or other individuals from the University of Edinburgh.

Posted

January 22, 2025

Disability, University of Edinburgh

Stewart Lamb Cromar

Tags:

Creative Commons, DLAM Feed, H5P, Interactive Content feed, Sight Scotland, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia

Comments

4 responses to “Five Years of Sight Loss”

Anne-Marie Scott

January 22, 2025

Hi Stuart – this is a wonderful blog post and thank you for so generously sharing what has been a very difficult journey for you. I shared your post via Mastodon this morning and a friend (Alan Levine) left a reply there that I wanted to ensure you heard:

“Wow, I cannot say wow. I had seen and shared Stewart’s posts and H5Ps that provide “insights” into visual impairments. These new additions are, as you say, inspiring, but also very informative OERs.

Personally, as living with Type 1 diabetes for 54 years, dealing with retinopathy, and maybe facing future vision challenges, I can’t thank him enough. Please pass it on to him.”

My post and his reply are here: https://social.ds106.us/@Ammienoot/113873724927638529

I think of you a fair bit when I’m here in Vancouver too – all my houseplants are Lego 😉

Reply
1. Stewart Lamb Cromar
  
  January 23, 2025
  
  Hello Anne-Marie!
  
  Thank you for taking the time to read this and leave a cheery comment.
  
  I very much appreciate you sharing this post, I would love it to reach other people in similar positions, so your Mastodon post is fantastic!
  
  I haven’t used that platform in a wee while, but I think I’m on a different server anyway, so including the quote from Alan is helpful.
  
  He has been very enthusiastic and encouraging about my posts in the past, and reading his reply made me emotional (in a good way).
  
  Lol, Lego plants are amazing. They might not need watering, but boy do they collect dust! A harbour for stoor as my mum says.
  
  Reply
Alan Levine

January 23, 2025

This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen on the web in a while, Stu (our mutual friend Anne-Marie calls you by that name). I saw it maybe 2 years ago and share it often as a both effective and humane use of H5P. This new update with the Interactive Book story collection takes it up another notch.

Thank you as well for making it an exemplar for an Open Educational Resource with supreme acts of attribution.

Also, it matters to me as I have been Type 1 diabetic for 54 years, had many rounds of laser surgery for diabetic retinopathy with a few bouts of short term blurring. Thank you for sharing your journey publicly.

Reply
1. Stewart Lamb Cromar
  
  January 23, 2025
  
  Morning Alan, what a lovely comment to wake up to.
  
  It’s a wonderful feeling to know my OERs resonate with others. The subject matter can sometimes be a little challenging, but I do think being transparent is key to making it of value.
  
  I particularly appreciate your attribution comment as I do want to minimise barriers for reuse, so thank you!
  
  Can I also thank you for kindly sharing it on OEG Connect, I’ve already had someone reach out to me on LinkedIn.
  
  Take care. Best wishes, Stewart
  
  Reply