Environmental Support for Mobility

My student with CVI was assessed for his CVI.  Results assessed him with these needs:

• Red is the color he attends to faster and sustains to longer. He sees this color at greater distances than other colors. Other colors are also accessible with a slight delay. If he has experience with a toy and loves it, he searches for that toy by its color (color is used for recognition not shape).
• Motion is important to gain his visual attention.
• His ability to locate items in the environment requires extra times to locate and to understand what he is looking at.
• Light is important to his visual attention
• He locates familiar items faster than new items.
• His best visual field is his left at eye level: He finds things faster, looks longer and sees things at greater distances on this side at this viewing plane. He places materials in this visual field at eye level if I hand him an item.
• He locates things best between 3-5 feet away but does not necessarily understand what they are.
• He finds items against plain backgrounds but struggles to locate or understand materials against complex backgrounds.

For moving through the school, the O&M specialist created visual landmarks for these needs:

• The arrow was large, red and shiny (shiny looks like movement as it captures the light).
• Locating the arrow was practiced again and again several times per day in his better left visual field at 3-5 feet at eye level.
• The arrow was placed in a non-complex area of the school wall at a turn indicating “turn here” to go back to class.

After 2 months, my student sees this familiar, highlighted travel cue at greater distances, in both visual fields and uses this to travel back and forth to buy his snack daily.