• Teacher Consultants for the Visually Impaired (TCVI):

    • Serve qualifying students with visual impairments ages birth through 26.
    • Assist students with blindness and visual impairments in accessing classroom and school resources.
    • Consult with classroom teachers, technology specialists, administrators and other school staff to assist students based on assessed needs.
    • Conduct Functional Vision Assessments and Learning Media Assessments to determine a student's visual functioning and learning media needs.
    • Ensure that all qualified students have the opportunity to access and participate with specific community or state resources.
    • Provide instructional support and community resources for families of students with visual impairments.
    Orientation and Mobility (O & M) Defined:

    Orientation:      Knowing your position in relation to other things in your environment doors, rooms, hallways to buildings, streets, towns, etc.) and maintaining that knowledge as your position changes.
     
    Mobility:  The ability to physically move from one place to another safely, efficiently and independently.
     
    Orientation and Mobility Specialists Teach Students with Blindness or Visual Impairments:
    • Independent travel through familiar and unfamiliar indoor and outdoor environments.
    • Sensory Awareness:  Gaining information about the world through hearing, smell, touch and proprioception.
    • Spatial Concepts:  Realizing that objects exist even if not heard or felt and understanding the relationships which exist between objects in the environment. 
    • Searching Skills:  Locating items or places efficiently.
    • Independent Movement:  Which includes crawling, rolling, walking, etc.
    • Human guide techniques or using another person to aid in travel.
    • Protective techniques or specific skills which provide added protection in unfamiliar areas.
    • Cane Skills:  Use of various cane techniques to clear one's path or to locate objects along the way.