The Visually Limited School Age Child
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One problem which teachers may need to deal with is that of the visually limited child. Of course, one must keep in mind that there are several theories and methodologies available on resources for teaching a child who is visually handicapped. Basically, though, there are two distinct schools of thought regarding the visually handicapped child. One holds that vision therapy is the only solution, often with the services of a specially trained technician. Others believe that vision training can be accomplished through adaptations made by the regular classroom teacher. This paper will present a brief overview of the problems associated with the visually limited child, will progress to some typical solutions offered, and then look at the twosided argument of visual therapy or vision training. Finally, the two arguments will be compared and contrasted, in the attempt to answer whether they are all that different or what kind of a combination would be best for children in the classroom. Throughout the paper, it will be assumed that the type of vision problems are not among the most severe, and also that the problems are limited to those of vision.As reported by the National Society to Prevent Blindness, the leading types of legal blindness in children birth to five years are 16.7 percent cataract, 30 percent damage to the optic pathway, 13.4 percent atrophy of the optic nerve, and 10 percent from a problem called retrolental fibroplasia.1 These, and other, problems are a
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rs outlined a theory postulating that vision efficiency can be learned.16 Others outlined a perceptual training program for persons with low vision.17 Advocates of visual training programs rely heavily on theory, and develop their programs to improve vision for reading.18
Recent studies, however, have reached greater conclusions of reliability, although they confine their assessments to the vision problems of accommodation and vergence. Accommodation, or the sluggishness in changing from one mode of accommodation to the other, is one aspect of vision disorder that can be helped by vision therapy. In a 1979 study, doctors proved through objective means that standard orthoptic procedures could improve accommodation vision problems.19 This research was replicated in 1983 and showed that statistically significant improvements were found 75 percent of the test subjects.20
In the visual problem of vergence, including symptoms of eyestrain, headaches, and eyes that tire easily, orthoptic therapy was shown to drastically improve the problem in almost every case studied. Further, recent advances in the field have provided increasing evidence that vision therapy can modify, improve, and significantly contribute to normalized vision in
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Prevent Blindness, Optometric Association, College Optometry, , Learning Disabilities, vision therapy, learning disabilities, Charles Thomas, Impairment Blindness, Journal Learning, journal learning disabilities, journal learning, John Day, Charles Merrill, vision training, optometric association, visually handicapped, optometric vision, visual impairment, therapy journal, handicapped child, american optometric association, visually limited child, visually handicapped child, disabilities journal learning,
Approximate Word count = 2410
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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