What is visual impairment?

Visual impairment refers to the inability or considerable difficulty for the eyes to perform normal visual functions. Some of these visually impaired children are completely blind, unable to see clearly, but most of them are with low vision (formerly called amblyopia), and they all have a considerable amount of usable vision, but individual vision varies greatly.

How to detect visual impairment in children?

In daily life, blind children are easy to be noticed because of their awkward movements, while children with low vision are easy to be neglected because of their available vision if parents do not observe carefully. If caregivers can find out as early as possible, with the early intervention of professionals, their difficulties can be eliminated or reduced, which will be of great help to their future education and life adaptation.

1) Generally, low vision children may exhibit the following behaviors in daily life:

Signs:

• Their eyes often quiver, blink, or squint.
• Squint, get close to see the target object; their eyes cannot focus properly on the object
• Rub their eyes often.
• Poor hand-eye coordination in homework or games.
• Unable to see objects in the distance clearly.
• Photophobia and difficulty distinguishing colors.
• Frown often, or cover their eyes with the hands to block out the glare.
• Walk with extreme caution.

2) When reading, parents can pay attention to whether their children have the following behavior signs:

• Not interested in pictures or books.
• Easy to get tired when reading and can't last for long.
• Reading slowly, often skipping words or lines.
• Often mispronouncing or misrecognizing words with similar shapes.
• Difficulty writing characters with more strokes correctly.

*For any of the above symptoms, please take your child to the pediatric ophthalmology department for medical examination.*

Assistance

• Some eye problems can be improved through surgery, such as cataract surgery, laser treatment of retinopathy.
• Corrective lenses and optical aids can help children with low vision make full use of their residual vision.
• Through multi-sensory learning, active exploration activities and clear oral instructions are encouraged to teach children pre-school concepts (e.g. object permanence, object classification, etc.) and language use, and help them improve their self-care and mobility.
• There are many needs in education, including listening skills, tactile discrimination, orientation and action, reading and writing ability and social adaptation.