Mobility Performance of Students with Blindness and Low Vision in an Institution
The mobility performance of students with blindness and with low vision inside the school requires a lot of determination, confidence and self esteem. Various aspects of psychosocial adjustment to blind and low vision students must be essential for positive adjustment and result. Many people have a misconception about the blindness and visual impairment; these students face tough challenges in adjusting psychologically and socially to their disability. And, self confidence and self esteem are the important constructive elements for the blind students to be able to adopt a new environment in the learning institution. For the blind and low vision students, for them to be able to adjust with the fast-pacing life cycle of any educational institution, they must therefore have great psychosocial adjustment which associated with full self confidence and self esteem among themselves. In fact, these two positive elements can help these vision impaired students to get a proper orientation, mobility and manipulation of spatial ideas on their social and economic status. Furthermore, based on the medical study, the age of onset blindness has a significant impact to the development of individual. It has been observed by various professionals and scholars that some students who were naturally blind since they were born; are more thankful than those people who lost their vision later in their life. In order to help these students to be independently functional and have positive development on themselves; they must be taught how to use effectively and advantageously their other senses. Students with blindness or have low vision must depend greatly on the auditory cues that they hear. At this time and age, there are more students who have low vision problem than those students who are inborn blind. Additionally, for those students who have low vision problem, they must be given extra attention and understanding by their parents as well as by the people who are with them all the time. (http://www.lowvision.org/achromatopsia_and_color_blindnes.htm)
Furthermore, there are many students today who barely read what is written in the blackboard or can not see the important signage on the streets. This eye condition of some of the students often lead them to become less active in class discussion and even have a hard time in understanding their lessons. So, it is advisable for the parents, to give full understanding, medical assistance and full support to their children with existing low-vision eye condition. There are many instances at present time, which individuals with low vision eye condition still excel in their field of profession as long as they are provided with the right eye glasses and other magnification tools. In the same manner, there still a need for a comprehensive medical assistance; and continuous eye check up with the ophthalmologist. The same thing goes to the blind students; they also entitle to learn series of techniques and strategies to be able to live independently and functionally despite their medical condition; and one effective learning strategy is to take Morse code course. There are orientation and mobility specialists who can be consulted to determine and assess the eye condition of the blind students. By this way, the medical specialists can help in the effective training that would give great benefits to the students with blindness cases. Remember, there are a lot of vision impaired students in the various universities who even do outstanding jobs as far as their studies are concerned. (http://www.accesselearning.net/mod1/1_04.php)
Correspondingly, faculty staff and the students should know how to interact with these students with blindness and low vision cases. They must be treated with due respect for their individual rights; as well as to their self-dignity, privacy and equality. What is more important is to make them feel that they are capable students in the learning institutions not “victims”. Aside from that, the other people in the educational institution must be of vital assistance to these visual impaired students, as to help them adapt the teaching techniques of the school. In giving instructions, the educator must deliver his/her directions in a clearer and well explained manner both verbal and written form. These students must be provided with complete information formats such as hand outs, worksheets, videos and tapes just to meet heterogeneous learning styles of these students. These students preferred a verbal learning process than in a written form. It may be helpful to the students with vision impairment to have an individual orientation to laboratory equipment or computers as well as to the different parts and places of the school. Doing this will eliminate their apprehension with the new and unfamiliar environment. Another thing, the educators should always verbalize what is written on the board as they can only figure it out through effective verbal communication with the people around them. (http://www.seels.net/designdocs/SEELS_FunctionalSkills.PDF)
References:
(http://www.lowvision.org/achromatopsia_and_color_blindnes.htm)
(http://www.accesselearning.net/mod1/1_04.php)
(http://www.seels.net/designdocs/SEELS_FunctionalSkills.PDF)
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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