Consultants for the Visually Impaired
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.