The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

A videotaped presentation in American Sign Language with verbal interpretation by a young deaf man with autism will describe his remarkable journey. This will update his experiences as a young working man facing transition to a group home. Last year, his description of his early life with limited developmental and daily living skills to completing his religious rite of entering manhood and voting in the Presidential election moved everyone in the audience.

This year’s focus on vision will look at collaborative issues in assessment. It has been argued that vision is the most powerful sense. How does the professional community best serve children on the autism spectrum that have difficulty organizing sensory information and have a visual impairment?  Successfully assessing children with autism presents a variety of challenges. This is further complicated for a child on the spectrum who has vision issues. Conducting a successful vision examination can mean addressing behaviors as well as finding ways to assess vision when the child is pre-verbal or non-verbal. An occupational therapist can assist the optometrist with the vision exam by offering sensory experiences prior to and during the visual examination, which will increase the success of the examination.

Once the examination is completed, the optometrist and the occupational therapist can review the findings and devise a set of interventions and strategies that address the child’s visual needs as well as sensory needs.

This collaborative approach between the low-vision optometrist and occupational therapist can lead to a cohesive treatment plan for teachers, parents and therapists that address both the vision and sensory needs of the child to allow for maximum success in all the child’s environments. 

Learning Objectives:

The participant will increase knowledge of symptoms of school-aged children with low-vision issues. These issues can include:

1)      Impaired mobility in unfamiliar areas

2)      Decreased reading speed or difficulty with learning to read

3)      Decreased interaction with other students not in the immediate area

·         Overview of low vision, including common reasons for low vision, both inherited and acquired.

·         Overview of sensory issues experienced by children on the spectrum, including self-stimulatory behaviors, sensory-seeking behaviors and sensory-avoiding behaviors.

·         Best-practice approaches for conducting a low-vision evaluation for children on the spectrum, including utilizing a variety of eye charts to measure visual acuity, binocularity and general ocular health.

·          Strategies and tools to best utilize the use low-vision evaluation findings in traditional therapy for children on the spectrum, such as taking into account the visual acuity and visual field when providing additional therapy and scholastic services.