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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.