As delved into the challenges and nuances of visual impairments, the blog post
The role of OT in supporting children with visual impairments – Occupational Therapy Helping Children explained some of the complexities people face and the importance of understanding its impact on children’s daily life.
In Australia, approximately 1 in every 2,500 newborns are expected to be diagnosed with significant vision impairment. Whether you are supporting a family member, a student, or a client, this blog post will share some general tips and strategies to support a child with a visual impairment, considering the many different contexts they might navigate in daily life.
During activities of daily living, it is important to support a child with a visual impairment by enabling equity:
- Always talk directly to the person, rather than to a support worker or guide.
- Make your presence known and acknowledge the individual straight away when they enter a room. Ensuring you introduce yourself before starting a conversation.
- Ask if they would like help and ask how you can help before assisting an individual.
- Offer precise verbal descriptions of activities, places, and people.
- When acting as a guide, give specific verbal cues to inform them of changes in direction and obstacles.
- Try and not assume what the individual can or can’t do.
- Politely end conversations instead of just walking away to ensure they are aware you are leaving.
As well as these supports, a child with a visual impairment can benefit from support within different environments such as home, school and when accessing the community.
Things you can do at home to support a child with a visual impairment:
- Designate places for items and toys within the home environment and be consistent about returning items to their designated place. This will support the child to develop their independence in locating items and increase their independence in participation in activities of daily living.
- Support with risk management by moving objects out of reach which may cause injury is bumped into such as sharp items left in an unfamiliar place or a heavy pan on the worksurface.
- Give detailed descriptions to support your child to locate an item or orientate themselves to their surroundings, specific to their visual capacity for example ‘your bag is in front of the red shoe box’ rather than ‘your bag is over there’.
- Separate toys when storing with clear individualised labels either braille or enlarged font depending on the child’s individual needs. This will enable the child the independently locate a toy to engage in play with reduced demands such as visual clutter and tactile discrimination.
- Support the child with inclusive and affirming language in daily activities such as ‘what can you see’ rather than ‘can you not see’ this will support to develop their confidence.
- An Occupational Therapist or orthoptist can complete a visit to the home environment and make recommendations on how to adapt the environment to best support the child’s participation and safety.
Things an educator can do at school to support a child with a visual impairment:
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- Ensure an open and safe space for the individual and peers to ask for help. Check in to see if they need help, if they have understood the task and if they have everything they need to participate in the task.
- Form an Individual learning plan with the child’s family or carers. Set goals and highlight individual strategies which can be implemented within the school environment to support the child to participate in school learning based tasks.
- Reduce visual clutter where able, in order to manage visual fatigue and enable increased attention. This could look like having curtains over open shelving or limiting one visual display on the board at a time.
- Designate places for materials and toys within the classroom environment and be consistent about returning items to their designated place.
- Look out for signs of fatigue and consider rest and movement breaks to manage sensory and emotional regulation throughout the school day.
- With the parents and child’s consent, offer education to peers on everyone having individual differences. This could also be extended to education on how peers can support the child within the school environment and during play.
- Provide structured adapted games during group play to foster positive friendships
- Be mindful of the impacts of visual impairments in reading others body cues
- Adapt gross motor activities to meet the child’s individual needs to enable increased independence with participation. Depending on the child’s individual needs and the Occupational Therapist or orthoptist recommendations, this could look like; using fluorescent flags or goals, using auditory balls, completing the activity within an environment with less glare to enable increased visual tracking.
- An Occupational Therapist or orthoptist can complete a visit to the school environment and make recommendations on how to adapt the environment to best support the child’s participation and safety. They can also offer support on how to adapt learning-based tasks to enable increased independence. This could look like using vison aids, using black pens on a whiteboard for high contrast, enlarged font, braille or sand coloured paper.
Things you can do when accessing the community to support a child with a visual impairment:
- If you are offering an individual assistance with a visual impairment or guiding, offer prompting when you are approaching a change in levels, surfaces and when approaching stairs.
- Encourage your child to link their vision to their other senses also such as auditory input near roads and crossings to begin to increase awareness of surroundings and increase independence with risk assessment.
When supporting a child with a visual impairment use a holistic approach addressing both development of skillset and implementation of strategies to independence and participation in activities of daily living. Compensatory strategies are also beneficial for the child to safety navigate their environment and increase their independence in participation.
Please see some examples of adapted resources below:
- Vision Australia Library – free access to braille and enlarged print books posted to your home address https://www.visionaustralia.org/services/library/access
- Audible AFL ball
- Audible Soccer Ball
- Audible Tennis ball
- Braille Uno cards
All of these resources can be found at: https://shop.visionaustralia.org/leisure.html
Please do not hesitate to reach out to a member of our team on hello@occupationaltherapy.com.au or 02 99133823 if you require occupational therapy input to support with specific strategies to meet your child’s needs or develop their skillset.
