Abstract
The prevalence of autism in children with blindness is much higher than in the general population. There are many challenges regarding the school situation for children with this complex dual disability. This study explored challenges and successful strategies in school for a sample of six Swedish children with blindness and autism, with and without intellectual disability, through qualitative interviews with students, teachers and parents. All students displayed executive functioning deficits, and the teaching situation entailed several challenges. Our research points to the importance of adopting evidence-based practices for ASD, but adapted according to the students lack of vision. For this to be possible, close collaboration between teachers, parents and specialists in the field of visual impairment and autism is necessary.
Highlights
Blindness in combination with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a rare dual disability that entails many challenges for a child’s development
Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (ONH) has been found to be strongly associated with ASD (Ek et al 2005; Garcia-Filion et al 2008; Parr et al 2010), as well as anophthalmia/microophthalmia, which has been reported to co-exist with ASD in genetic cranio-facial malformation syndromes, including CHARGE (Blyth and Baralle 2011; Pushker et al 2013)
First we present a brief summary of the students’ school history, the educational levels of the teachers and the students’ general school achievement, based on information from the interviews and the documentation that was collected from the schools
Summary
Blindness in combination with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a rare dual disability that entails many challenges for a child’s development. While the prevalence of ASD in the general child population is around 1% (Lazoff et al 2010), research has shown that among children with blindness, regardless of etiology, at least 30% meet the criteria for ASD (Cass 1998; Hobson et al 1999; de Verdier et al 2017). In a Swedish population-based study of extremely preterm-born children with ROP, nearly two-thirds of the children with total blindness had ASD, and all of them had an intellectual disability (ID) (Ek et al 1998; Jacobson et al 1998). Autism is currently one of the most commonly reported coexisting developmental disorders in children with blindness (Ek 2010)
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