I am a Finnish pediatric ophthalmologist who, after my thesis on experimental fluorescein angiography in Finland, worked from1967 to 1969 as Dr. A. Edward Maumenee’s Fellow at the Wilmer Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, USA, starting the first clinical fluorescein angiographic laboratory, which was an important area in diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa and histoplasmosis at that time. At Wilmer Institute I became interested in vision rehabilitation and have worked in vision rehabilitation and development of assessment techniques since the 1970s when I was in charge of the first Vision Rehabilitation Centre in Helsinki, Finland. I have trained rehabilitation teams starting in 1984 in Madrid and have given courses in more than 30 countries on all five continents. I worked seven years as the lecturer in ophthalmology at the Nordic Staff Training Centre for Deaf-Blind Services and spent a sabbatical year at the Smith-Kettlewell Institute in San Francisco to study communication during assessment of deaf-blind patients.