No Diagnosis of CVI?

I am not a doctor and would never assume to be qualified to give a diagnosis of CVI for any child in my care. I do observe children’s visual behavior and suspect cortical/cerebral visual impairment.  I try to steer the families to ophthalmologists that understand CVI and make sure I provide the doctor with detailed observations and assessment results. I do this in the hopes that the diagnosis of CVI will be made. But I can not wait for a diagnosis. I must conduct this assessment of visual factors that greatly influence child’s ability to learn. It is my job as a teacher to students with visual impairments to provide detailed functional vision assessments.

In my functional vision report, here is the language that I use:

“Given the assessed ocular health of XXX’s eyes, the positive history of brain involvement, complex visual developmental history and reduced functional vision for learning and accessing the environment, XXX was educationally assessed (name the tools used). Functional vision observations focused on the these recognized characteristics of brain based visual impairment: This is not meant to serve as a diagnosis, only as educational observations that will lead to increased access to visual learning and to the creation of strategies and environmental supports to build vision use”.