The first ever VISPA Vision Week will take place this month, marking an important milestone in the development of VISPA (Vision Impaired Service Providers Alliance) since it was founded in 2008. As you know VISPA is made up of NCBI, Fighting Blindness, Irish Guide Dogs and St. Joseph’s Centre for the Visually Impaired.

We hope that Vision Week will become an annual event, aimed at promoting eye health and also at raising issues relating to blindness and vision impairment. In holding a national Vision Week, we hope to be able to provide more information on sight loss, including the main causes of sight loss and what it means to live with different eye conditions. There is a commonly held misconception that everyone who uses NCBI’s services is blind, meaning that they cannot see anything at all. However, the majority of people who use our services have low vision so it is important to highlight this fact. Specsavers have kindly provided sponsorship to allow VISPA to run an ad in the cinema and radio ads during the week. Another exciting development is the arrival of the technology exhibition Sight Village to Ireland for the first time, which you can read more about on page 21.

It’s hard to believe that summer is upon us once again. Some of our readers share their favourite holiday memories inside. At the time of writing this, the unpronounceable Icelandic volcano is still creating havoc for air passengers in Europe, but we hope that by the time this issue reaches our readers, restrictions will have eased and travel will have opened up again. In the last issue we brought you news of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Thankfully the eruption of this volcano has not resulted in the loss of lives but it has brought home to us once again how we are at the mercy of Mother Nature and also reminded us of our vulnerability as an island nation. One thing is certain, Mother Nature is intent on reminding us who is in charge!