Early Intervention Vision Services Available for Your Baby

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As a part of Early Intervention, your child may be evaluated for his or her visual functioning.

Tests help to determine a diagnosis and appraisal of specific visual disorders, delay, and abilities. Once an assessment is made, you may be referred to medical or other professional services ready help your child.

Additional related services include communication skills training, orientation, and mobility training for all environments, visual training, independent living skills training,  These and other types of training help to activate visual motor abilities.

Functional Vision Assessment

The functional vision assessment is a method of gathering information about an individual’s functional use of vision for the usual tasks of daily life.

Typically, a qualified professional in the health, education, or rehab field conducts the assessment. This might include eye care providers, a teacher of the Visually Impaired, a Certified Mobility Specialist, or a trained Occupational or Rehab/Vision Therapist.

Information for the assessment is gathered through a variety of sources and may include input from family members, care providers, practitioners, and educators.

Ideally, prior to the functional vision evaluation, the individual has received a basic eye examination by an eye care professional, such as an Ophthalmologist, Pediatric Ophthalmologist, Optometrist, or Low Vision/Pediatric Optometrist. These professionals are best able to examine the individual’s eye health, identifying the presence of any refractive, accommodative, or structural abnormalities.

The functional vision assessment might include a combination of formal and informal screening activities, tools, materials, and tasks. The assessment can be conducted in both clinical and non-clinical settings like home, school, community, rehab facility, medical center or a physician’s office.

If the individual has prescription eyeglasses, it’s important that the eyeglasses be in place during the assessment whenever possible. The functional vision assessment usually considers the following areas; visual field use, functional acuity, visual pursuit, eye-hand use, eye-teaming behaviors, color/pattern/contrast considerations, and lighting needs. As a result of the assessment, the individual’s current visual parameters can be better understood and appropriate interventions that reflect strengths and needs can be designed.