The language of blind children: normal or abnormal?

The language of blind children has been the object of an increasing amount of research, particularly in recent years. This research has however led to quite different claims about the presence of differences between blind and sighted children and the effect of such possible differences on their language development. It is claimed, on the one hand, that blind children’s language is not deficient in any way, but, on the other, that their language development is at risk. Such claims are obviously relevant to any description of the role of vision in language acquisition but also have repercussions for compensatory programmes for blind children. By examining data from different areas of language acquisition, such as phonology, lexicon, reference and input, from the author’s own and others’