1. Blindness and Low Vision
Chapter 10
Blindness and Low Vision
Developed by:
Blanche Jackson Glimps
Tennessee State University

2. Chapter Objectives
State and briefly describe the instructional implications of the three general classifications of visual impairments used by educators.
Describe how blindness and low vision affect learning, motor development, and social interaction.
Identify the estimated prevalence of children with visual impairments.

3. Chapter Objectives
Explain why it is important for teachers to know about the types of visual impairments affecting children in their classrooms.
Compare the educational goals and instructional methods for children with low vision and children who are blind.
Explain how the educational placement of a student with visual impairments can affect her opportunities to learn the expanded core curriculum of nonacademic skills necessary for overall success in life.

4. Legal Definitions
The legal definition is based on visual acuity and field of vision.
A person whose visual acuity is 20/200 in the better eye with the use of a corrective lens is considered blind.
A person whose visual acuity falls between 20/70 and 20/200 in the better eye after correction is considered partially sighted for legal purposes.

5. Educational Definitions
IDEA definitions of visual impairments emphasizes the relationship between vision and learning.
Totally blind: Receives no useful information through the sense of vision and uses tactile and auditory senses for all learning.
Functionally blind: Learns primarily through the auditory and tactile senses.
Low vision: Uses vision as a primary means of learning but supplements by using tactile and auditory input.

6. Age of Onset
Congenitally Blind: visual impairment is present at birth; a background of learning through hearing, touch, and the other nonvisual senses
Adventitiously Blind: visual impairment is acquired; a visual memory of things is retained

7. Characteristics: Cognition and Language
Perform more poorly than sighted children on cognitive tasks requiring comprehension or relating different items of information.
Impaired or absent vision makes it difficult to see the connections between experiences.
Visual impairments precludes incidental learning.
Abstract concepts, analogies, and idiomatic expressions can be difficult to understand without sight.

8. Characteristics: Motor Development and Mobility
Visual impairment often leads to delays and deficits in motor development
Four functions of vision in the acquisition of motor skills
Motivation
Spatial awareness
Protection
Feedback
A child without clear vision may move less often because movement in the past resulted in painful contact with the environment.

9. Characteristics: Social Adjustment and Interaction
Children with visual impairments play and interact less during free time and are often delayed in social skills. Many struggle with
Social isolation
Inability to see and respond to others’ social signals
Stereotypic behavior
The inability to see and respond to the social signals of others reduces opportunities for reciprocal interactions.

10. Characteristics: Social Adjustment and Interaction
Some individuals with visual impairments engage in repetitive body movements or other stereotypic behaviors such as
body rocking, eye pressing and poking, hand flapping and hand weaving.
Many persons who have lost their sight report that the biggest difficulty socially is dealing with the attitudes and behavior of those around them.

11. Prevalence Fewer than 2 children in 1000 have visual impairments.
Only about 1 in 200 to 250 of all school-age children with IEPs are served under the category of visual impairments.
During the 2012 to 2013 school year, approximately 28,000 children ages 3 to 21 years received special education services under the IDEA category of visual impairment.

12. Prevalence
Many school age children with visual impairments also have another disability and are served under other disability categories such as deaf-blindness.
The number is much larger than the data reported for IDEA.
The American Printing House for the Blind reported that 51,974 children from birth to age 21 years were eligible for services for visual impairment in 2014.

13. How We See
Effective vision requires proper functioning of three anatomical systems of the eye:
The optical system collects and focuses light energy reflected from objects in the visual field.
The muscular system enables ocular motility.
The nervous system converts light energy into electrical impulses and transmits that information to the brain.

14. How We See
As light passes through the eye, several structures bend, or reflect, the light to produce a clear image.
Cornea
Aqueous Humor
Pupil
Lens
Vitreous Humor
Retina

15. Causes
Refractive Errors: Myopia (nearsightedness) and hyperopia (farsightedness)
Structural Impairments: Cataracts, glaucoma, nystagmus, strabismus
Cortical Visual Impairments: Suspected damage to parts of the brain that interpret visual information

16. Educational Approaches
Braille is the primary means of literacy for people who are blind.
Braille is a tactile system of reading and writing composed of raised dots.
Braille Technological Aids
Tactile Aids and Manipulatives
Technological Aids for Reading Print
Computer Access

17. Specialized Instructions for Students with Low Vision
75% and 80% of school-age children, with visual impairments, have some potentially useful vision. Children with congenital low vision
view themselves as whole.
generally view the environment as stationary and clear.
may have a sense of visual beauty, enjoy their visual abilities, and use vision to learn.
Low vision offers a different aesthetic experience.
Vision is not always the most efficient or preferred method of functioning.

18. Visual Efficiency
Functional vision and visual efficiency teaches the use of remaining vision.
It encompasses the following skills: awareness, fixing or locating, scanning, tracking, gaze shifting, discriminating, and visual sequencing.
The fundamental premises underlying the development of visual efficiency is that functional vision is learned behavior and therefore teachable.

19. Optical Devices Glasses and contact lenses
Handheld telescopes and magnifiers
Monocular vs. binocular aids
Prisms and fish-eye lenses
Closed-circuit television systems
Augmented reality systems

20. Reading Print
About 62% of students with vision impairments read printed text. Approaches for Reading Print for Children with Low Vision include:
Approach magnification
Lenses
Large print
Other factors to consider are the print quality of the material, the font or typeface, the contrast between print and page, the spacing between lines, and the illumination of the setting in which the child reads.

21. Classroom Adaptations
Proper Lighting
Desks with Adjustable or Tilting Tops
Writing Paper
Modified Worksheets
Chairs with Wheels

22. Reading Print
Strategies for accommodating the slower reading rates of most children with low vision include
Providing 1½ to 2 times as much time as sighted children need for reading
Ensuring sufficient time to study and use auditory reading aids
Allowing extra time on tests

23. Expanded Core Curriculum
Orientation and mobility training (O&M)
Cane Skills
Guide Dogs
Sighted Guides
Electronic Travel Aids
Listening skills
being aware of sounds, discriminating differences in sounds, identifying the source of sounds, and attaching meaning to sound
Functional life skills
daily living and career skills

24. Placement Options
Most children with visual impairments are educated in public schools
65% are members of general education classrooms
13% attend resource rooms for part of each day
11% are served in separate classrooms
4% attend residential schools
Most students who are included in general education classrooms receive support from itinerant teacher-consultants

25. Support in the General Education Classroom
The most important factor to the successful inclusion of students with visual impairments is a skilled and supportive general education teacher.
Suggesting for supporting students with visual impairment include
Communicate with Clarity and Respect
Expect and Enable Independence

26. What Do Blind People Want From Society?
The opportunity to be equal and the right to be different!
Print and braille are equal but different
Need for independent travel is similar but skills are learned differently
Concepts and learning requires different experiences for blind persons