Cortical Visual Impairment

I don’t think anyone can say without more detail. Can the child recognize the alphabet? Down to how small? Does a magnifying glass or one of those plastic magnifying sheets help? Does he have glasses and do they help? I would experiment a bit to see if the child has enough functional vision to do something useful.

Also, do you know if this vision problem is predicted to be stable or to get worse, and how many years do you have? I have a blind friend who was very happy to have learned to read, even if he lost all vision in his teens. The analytical skil is important. So do teach reading if you have more than a year or two.

Braille is very good but the limited availability of Braille books makes it less desirable if there is an option of using regular books.

Books on tape and/or scanned books do not entirely replace reading; my blind friend greatly preferred using Braille when he could get it. The analytical aspect of reading is missing on recordings, and the difficulty of rereading and searchig is enormous. Go for sme form of reading as much as possible.

What does the Vision Specialist say? There is so much variability with this diagnosis.

What I have noticed is that, right now he can recognize most letters in isolation (we’re using the Wilson sound cards). I have been working with him with the goal of reading CVC words, but he seems to lose his place when tracking. Watching him, I have been wondering if he has such difficulty tracking one CVC word, is it reasonable to expect him to track a line or multiple lines of text down the road. Thank you for your input. I have not worked with a child with this visual impairment, and do not want him to hate reading because it is too frustrating if there is another alternative he will be more successful with.

This may seem counterintuitive, but how about trying smaller print? Usually quite large print is used in order to make details easier to see for the beginner. However if this student has a very small effective visual field, then large print means he can only see one letter or part of a letter at a time. Try twelve point (or even ten) and see if he can focus on it and identify letters; then try your CVC in that size. These are only sugestions, but it can’t hurt to find out.

Gee the whole trouble with the “cortical visual impairment” is that we don’t know exactly what the heck it is. I worked, many years ago, in a deaf blind program and we did have what they termed “cortically blind and deaf” children. We did vision stimulation, which was basically tracking and fixating on objects and within I dont’ know a couple months, they were tracking objects. What it was is that they went to an optometrist and didn’t typically respond to visual stimuli. They certainly didn’t respond like blind kids though. I saw a film some time that year, can’t remember who did it or anything but it showed how they taught ‘cortically blind’ children to read. They just introduced the material and the kids would say they were guessing that they really couldn’t see it. (They didn’t start out with letters, which objects and so on). But their guesses were very high %. So they kept at it. I think they call it “blind sight”. These kids actually acted blind though, unlike the kids I worked with.

As a practical matter though, don’t know what to tell you, as I don’t know what it actually means. I would really try to get info from the vision specialist. I would also experiment (I think the small print makes a bit of odd sense too.) If you have a draw program in a works program, you might also try elongating the letters so they are kind of stretched out. You might also try colors, different papers and color text.

—des