Visual Impairments

Visual Impairments

A book describing visual impairments and the students that have visual impairments

By Carrie Shephard

A visual impairment is defined as a loss of vision that often adversely affects educational performance. It includes those who are blind or partially sighted; the inability to see or see well, even with corrections (like glasses).

The U.S. Department of Education repirted in 2014 that about 25,700 children ages 6-21 were receiving services for a visual impairment. That means about 0.4% of students suffer from this. It doesn't sound like much, but you would be shocked at how many children deal with this!

There are many different categories of visual impairments. They include:
To be blind means the individual may have some light or form perception or be totally without sight.
To be functionally blind means the primary channel of learning is through tactile (touch) or auditory (hearing) means due to limited or no vision.
Low vision is a visual impairment that interferes with the ability to perform daily activities.
And lastly, residual vision is defined as usable vision.

The challenges that people with visual impairments face includes them experiencing significant academic delays. Learning for these kinds of students depends more on what they can hear and touch, so it takes a little bit longer for them to learn things without fully seeing it.

A loss of vision also can negatively affect that acquisition or appropriate social skills. Since they cannot see as well, it is difficult to participate in everything that most other kids are doing. Things like playing sports, talking with small groups of people, and even running around on the playground is difficult for them. This leads them to a lack of emotional development as well, because they are not fulfilling all their social needs.

There are TONS of ways a teacher can help a student with a visual impairment still learn like the rest of the kids in class.

There are different ways a teacher can present the information to their students. Things like magnifiers, large print books, story boards, and audio books all help kids with visual impairments read and work with the rest of the class.

There are also many ways to assess, or test, these students with visual impairments. Tests like oral presentation, interviews, Braille, and dramatization all allow these students to still show what they know despite their disability.

There are also a bunch of different ways to engage students with visual impairments. These include choral reading, chants or songs, drama, and Braille writer. These all help the students be more engaged and active in their learning. There are so many ways these students can be included!

Orientation and mobility training is just one resource to help visually impaired students. This training is required for all students who are blind, and it consists of using sytematic techinques to plan routes and move from place to place.

As we have mentioned before, there is also Braille for students with a major visual impairments or blindness to use. This helps students a ton when it comes to reading and getting what's going on in class!

Let's review what we learned today.

We saw what it is like to have a visual impairment, and what it means to have a visual impairment or blindenss. We also explored the challenges these students deal with and how teachers use different strategies to help them. We also learned about different resources to help these students, and here we are!

The point of this story book was to not only teach you about visual impairments and the effects it has on those students, but it also puts the reader (YOU) in the shoes of a visual impaired person. Use what you learned in this book to communicate with and be more aware of visually impaired students.

Gargiulo, Richard M., and Deborah J. Metcalf. Teaching in Today's Inclusive Classrooms: A Universal Design for Learning Approach. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2017. Print.

Johnson, Dylan. "My Journey as a Legally Blind Pro Photographer." PetaPixel. N.p., 02 July 2015. Web. 17 Apr. 2017. https://petapixel.com/2015/07/01/my-journey-as-a-legally-blind-pro-photographer/