Cerebral Visual Impairments: Meeting Learning Needs Together

This workshop is designed to help TSVIs and O&M specialists with a basic understanding of CVI move their practice to the next level. We will discuss our role on the educational team when learners have CVI. This will include consideration of how our specialty can best support the learner while working in conjunction with others on the team such as the classroom teacher, OT, PT, and SLP. We will answer important questions such as, “What is their role? What is my role? How do our roles converge and diverge to meet student needs?” The majority of the day will be spent exploring the current understanding of the visual brain including the primary visual cortex, ventral stream, and dorsal stream. You will discover what to do and what to look for throughout assessment of functional vision and learning needs. Finally, time will be spent considering how we can collaborate within the educational environment to meet student needs.

Mindy S. Ely, Ph.D., is an Associate Chair of the Department of Special Education at Illinois State University and the Principal Investigator for the LIMITLESS grant, a program designed to train teachers of the visually impaired and teachers of the deaf in the specialized needs of infants and toddlers. Dr. Ely has two active lines of research; one focusing cerebral visual impairments, the other on early intervention. Dr. Ely co-founded the Neurological Visual Impairment Division of the Association for the Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (2018) and co-authored a position paper defining the professional roles and responsibilities of vision educators when learners have cerebral visual impairment (Mazel, Morse, Ely, Zatta, 2020). Her research in the area of CVI has resulted in the development of an assessment framework designed to help TVIs and O&M specialists understand functional vision and the impact on educational program planning needs.

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the specialty of the TSVI and O&M specialist on the educational team when students have CVI.
• Understanding of the functional assessment needs pertaining to the primary visual cortex, the ventral stream, and the dorsal stream.
• Use assessment data to determine program planning needs.