Welcome to this newly launched Journal of Disability Research, the first of its kind to be established within the Middle East. The Journal is a product of the King Salman Centre for Disability Research; indeed, the reader is urged to spend time in exploring the many activities of this important and highly impactful centre, dedicated as it is to seeking amelioration of physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental conditions that can pose a myriad of difficulties in the conduct of daily life. The conditions can impair, interfere with and limit an ability to engage in a range of tasks and actions, including in undertaking typical daily activities. Illnesses of various types, injury, or conditions can clearly make it difficult to do numbers of things that others can more easily do. These are matters that not only need to be more widely appreciated but also acted upon in support of those who endure such conditions. We each of us need to be mindful of the need to develop a more caring society. The sufferers face a large range of challenges, ones that can be long-term and more often than not permanent. A further aspect to be worked on in addition to investigations of physical, mental, cognitive and developmental conditions is that of changing attitudes towards disability. Understanding of the restrictions that disability can place upon an individual needs to be much more widely built into our psyche, with a need to develop aids that can help integrate those with disability into enjoying a more rewarding daily life. Urban planning and facilities that can aid social mobility also need to be much improved, actions that are not only restricted to town planning but also within the home.
This journal wishes to play a considerable part in disseminating disability research, in so-doing furthering broader awareness of the issues. At the same time, we wish to encourage and help stimulate novel lines of research. The desire is to point to the progress that is being made in various situations, not least towards helping to ameliorate the effects of life restricting conditions where and wherever they arise. To place matters in context, in this very first issue we begin by providing examples of research conducted at the biophysical level, augmented by one further article looking at the manifestation of lower back pain. The more fundamental aspects are covered in targeted reviews, the first concerning alterations to the lens of the eye that can arise from disease with gradual impaired vision, the other on cartilage alterations impacting on mobility. These reviews focus on an understanding of underpinning cell biology and organized tissue alterations, arising out of disease, inclusive of genetic factors and predispositions, emerging in terms of disability. We invite you, the reader, to come forward with your own research, be it at a fundamental, operational or policy level, and in doing so contribute towards making this journal the success that we wish and envisage it to be.