Visual impairment affects an estimated 19 million children under 15 globally, with 12 million of them having vision issues that could be diagnosed and corrected, leaving 7 million children under 15 with significant visual impairments (WHO, 2021). The impact of receiving a visual impairment diagnosis can affect many aspects of a caregiver's life…

It has been widely recognized that a visual impairment can limit an individual's ability to learn through visual observations. This decreased limited visual access which could impact how the skills to access and recognize the world around them develop. However, when the visual impairment was brain-based, such as in Cortical/Cerebral Visual…

Blind and low vision youth represent a diverse, low incidence disability student population in United States public schools. This qualitative study investigated the perspectives of four Black mothers and grandmothers, each primary caregivers of blind/low vision (BLV) children, related to their experiences with navigating the education system and…

Tact is the most important verbal operant (Skinner, 1957) due to the uniqueness of stimulus control and its role in facilitating acquisition of another verbal (e.g., mands, intraverbals) and nonverbal (i.e., listener) operants (Sundberg, 2015). Teaching tacts to children with ASD and the research on this area, however, are largely focused on…

Childhood permanent, uncorrectable vision impairment (VI) is rare, yet it is a public health burden as the impairment lasts a lifetime. Vision impairment describes decreased vision that affects everyday activities. Acuity cut-points commonly used include 20/40, 20/60 or 20/70. Blindness often refers to legal blindness (best corrected visual acuity…

Medical advances in recent years have increased survival rates of infants born prematurely and/or infants and children that present with life-threatening conditions (Good et al., 1994; Khetpal & Donahue, 2007; Murphy & Carbone, 2011). These increased survival rates are associated with an increase in the number of children who have severe…

Joint attention is developmental skill that is typically acquired through visual input during the first year of life in typically developing children. Children with visual impairments develop joint attention through alternate senses such as tactile and auditory input (Baron-Cohen, 1995) and show joint attention behaviors unlike those of typically…

Children with visual impairments have unique learning needs because visual impairment impacts a child's ability to learn incidentally though observation (Lowenfeld, 1952, 1973). Literature suggests children with visual impairments do not perform independent living skills at the same level as their peers with typical vision (e.g., Lewis &…