escWorks

Description: This workshop will focus on the understanding, tools, and skills necessary for designing an accessible academic experience for children with Cortical Visual Impairments (CVI). Academics for this population are treated broadly as encompassing everything from counting and recognizing letters, through advanced mathematics, and reading comprehension. Participants will explore and use the CVI Ally framework (forthcoming from Perkins Publications) as a tool for guiding the team in understanding and addressing CVI’s impact on a student’s school day.

Intended Audience: TVIs, O&Ms, People with CVI, family members of people with CVI, special educators, related services (PT, OT, SLP, etc.), general education teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals.

Objectives:

• Participants will gain a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of CVI’s impact on a person, resulting in greater empathy and understanding of their experiences.
• Participants will gain a deeper understanding of some of the key CVI experiences or characteristics, particularly difficulty with simultaneous visual information, visual recognition, multi-sensory processing, and motion processing.
• Participants will be able to describe the ways that CVI can impact a person’s emotional and behavioral life, both subtle and outward.
• Participants will gain an understanding of the design tools at our disposal to provide accommodations and interventions for people with CVI, especially in the areas of visual, auditory, tactual and kinesthetic strategies.
• Participants will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of CVI’s potential impact on the general domains of a school day, including the school environment, navigating throughout the school, social interactions, group instruction, and access to 2D materials.
• Participants will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of CVI’s potential impact on literacy skills, along with effective intervention strategies.

Instructor: Matt Tietjen