Children with CVI can struggle with reduced or no eye contact. I always struggle with behavior-based teams as I try to explain that eye contact is impossible for some children due to CVI. Eye contact can sometimes feel like the only focus for a child’s education in these behavior-based programs. These children with CVI are visually impaired and CAN’T look at the complexity of the noisy, moving, ever changing face.
We would never demand “looking” from a blind child yet it appears again and again on IEPs for children with CVI, a poor and impossible goal. There are so many other things to work towards! Eye contact is a skill we want to develop but it comes after visual skills are solid for less complex targets.
I see eye contact develop when the child is accessing materials in the world visually. Then I begin to see “face contact” where a child looks towards people’s faces but not necessarily in the eyes. I do encourage children to face the speakers and remind them to point “nose to nose”. If they begin to orient towards the speaker’s voice using their auditory skills this is seen as more typical for socialization.
Eye contact does develop with support and understanding of the impact of complexity. Eye contact skills are first seen in familiar, quiet environments but as soon as the speaker begins to deliver a message, the eye contact disengages. The child clearly can’t listen and look to the complex face at the same time as eye contact skills build. Children might also need to look away from faces when delivering a message themselves. Children might then develop the ability to look at familiar faces but not at unfamiliar ones or have eye contact abilities when the speaker is calm with a softer voice.
Lack of eye contact in children with CVI is not a social breakdown such as that seen in children with autism. It is a complexity issue for the child with CVI. The eye contact visual skills must be developed not demanded.
cvi teacher 
Thanks for your insights. I really enjoy your blogs – they are incredible useful. I have shared a link to your blog on the Facebook group for kids with CDKL5 disorder (inc. CVI) many times. Thought you should know!
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This is useful, but I would like to encourage you to remove the inaccurate reference to autism. Autistic folks often choose not to make eye contact for similar reasons — visual processing gets overwhelmed or “used up” and facial expressions are less meaningful to us as a means of communication. Autistic students should also have the option of orienting toward the general area of speaking partner but not looking at their eyes if it is uncomfortable or pointless. The double empathy problem is applicable to all disabled folks — abled folks should be taught to understand our communication rather than expecting us to fake it for nondisabled people’s comfort.
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