Observation Day 2: Meeting with an Expert (Week 3)

I visited Dr. Yue-Ting Siu, a TVI (Teacher of Visual Impairments) and an assistant professor in the Program for Visual Impairments in the Department of Special Education at San Francisco State University. We discussed some of her experiences working with students with vision impairments, her opinions about the field, and resources that are available to improve the learning experience for those visually impaired.

The purpose of this study was to raise the awareness of having children with and without disabilities be in the same classroom although, Dr. Ting did inform me about the importance of self-contained classrooms for vision impaired students as well. Based on the severity of the student's vision impairment, self-contained classrooms with students sharing the same impairment may be the best option. These classrooms may be better-equipped to help the student thrive in their education. Although, vision impaired students do not need to stay at a blind school for the rest of their school years; if the student has gained enough confidence in their abilities, they may be able to attend schools that are not inclusive to the vision impaired.

Early childhood intervention is a service provided to help children from birth to age 3 who have developmental delays or specific health conditions. This may be helpful for the child to catch up and increase their likelihood for success in school and life overall. Dr. Ting explained that caring for a young child with a vision impairment may be challenging but they key is to simply rethink how to interact with the child. For example, a parent is preparing a meal and has the child seated on a chair. Without having to explain, the child may be able to understand what the parent is doing from simply watching. A parent of a visually impaired child does the same but adds speech. The parent can explain to the child by saying, "I have filled a pot with water for the pasta to cook in". Additionally, the parent can have the child touch the pot (when cool) as well. The method of how information is typically processed (sight first) simply needs to be revised to support the child. This thought process can also be applied to any other child, disabled or not.

There were some additional facts about the field of vision impairment:

• Young children may be misdiagnosed with autism due to a faulty assessment process which does not consider vision impairments; children are then reassessed by a TVI.
• Children may share the same type of diagnosis but may handle the effects differently
• There is a shortage of TVI's; only 22 programs for TVI training in the United States and 2 of those programs are located in California (San Francisco State University and California State University of Los Angeles)
• There is a lack of consideration for vision-impaired accessibility (i.e. lack of resources, tools, educational material, etc.)
• There is a need for the blind community to become designers and content creators

Here are a few materials that Dr. Ting often uses with her students.