2.2. ASSESSMENT

The goal of the assessment is to identify how much vision there is for learning in the different educational areas and which techniques need to be taught. Low vision children have individual needs and great variation in the techniques used because they may use both techniques typical to persons with low vision, and techniques typical to blind or normally sighted persons. Some of them change the technique used in photopic (day light) conditions to another technique in mesopic (twilight) conditions. Thus in each case it should be specified how much vision, when it is enhanced, there is for:

  • communication and information
  • orientation and mobility (O&M)
  • activities in daily life and (ADL)
  • sustained near vision tasks (SNVT)

and in which areas compensatory techniques (= vision substitution techniques) will be used. In the assessment of infants and young children these four areas need to be subdivided into several developmental areas and levels. They are discussed in Part III.

Since an infant and a child are in the phase of rapid development, two aspects need to be considered during each assessment:
1. use of vision in the activities that the infant/child has now, and
2. the effect of limited visual information on further development
of all functions, including motor development, development of spatial concepts, language and communication.

Since the development of an infant and a child is so dependent on parents and caretakers, it is important to also consider in each case, whether
3. the child is likely to get sufficient support or whether special intervention is required.

Before the assessment, information needs to be collected about the child's disorder, medical history, refractive error, previous functional assessments, and the low vision services the child has received previously.

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