An educational assessment of functional vision for children ages 3–5

Abstract

During 20 years at ELIYA (Israel Association for the Advancement of Blind and Visually Impaired Children), a multidisciplinary team (vision teacher, social worker, representative of the social service department and an optometrist) has evaluated over 600 children from birth to 5 years of age. About 60% of the VI children evaluated were multihandicapped. The remaining percentages were children functioning close to their chronological age. Most of the children we evaluated had undergone extensive medical procedures (US, CT, MRI, VEP and ERG), and had a medical diagnosis. All the children had an Ophthalmologic and Optometric examination. In most situations the children did not cooperate in Low Vision evaluations, or they did not have the required skills to make use of these evaluations (BUST, LH cards). All these reports did not provide enough information about the child's use of vision in real life situations, and these “real life situations” are the environments which promote growth and development. This particular assessment is meant to demonstrate the tools to evaluate the child's functional vision through the use of common objects in real life situations. The information gathered in this assessment enables the low vision teacher and the parent to develop an educational program which will further the development of functional vision. The skills evaluated in this assessment include:–distance used for near and far vision,–scanning skills,–skills used in identifying pictures,–skills used in identifying objects in space,–graphic skills,–distinguishing figure from background.