Description:
We learn so much through our vision, including our movements, social behavior, fashion sense, spatial concepts, language concepts, and incidental learning. Vision helps interpret sound and movement experiences, helps build motivation and anticipation, and fixes the world spatially so that sensory information makes sense. A child born with a visual impairment will have difficulty with the meaningful organization of environmental information. The implications are huge; most aspects of functional life skills will be much more challenging than for sighted children. This presentation will include strategies for dealing with money, clothing, cooking, shopping, telling time, and marking items for later identification. A wide variety of assistive technology, or gadgets, will be explored. As providers, there are a lot of tools we can share with any of our visually impaired clients to help them gain as much functional independence as possible.

Speaker Biography :
Karin Hoffman Taylor has been working as an occupational therapist in a wide variety of settings and geographical locations since graduating from the Medical College of Georgia in 1979. She has been serving the students of The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind since 1999. She has completed two years of graduate level assistive technology training through Assistive Technology Partners in Denver. She completed her Doctorate in OT in 2007 from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, with her final project being the development of a Daily Living Skills Curriculum for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Learning Outcomes:
As a result of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of how blindness affects almost all aspects of life and learning.

2. Participants will be familiar with strategies and tips to make life easier for those who are blind.

3. Participants will be familiar with assistive technology that will help those who are blind function more independently.

 

Additional Information: http://www.atia.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageID=3847

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CEUs
This activity has been reviewed by AAC Institute and is offered for 0.1 CEUs (1.0 hour of instruction).

To register for CEUs, click on the link below to download the Evaluation and Learning Assessment Form, complete the form, and save the file using this file name model:

2010-ATIA-Webinar-August4-Lastname-Firstname.rtf.

Then send the file as an email attachment to ceus@aacinstitute.org. If any difficulty is encountered in using this form, write to ceus@aacinstitute.org to request an alternative file format. In the body of the email, include:

Name
Assistive Technology Role (SLP, OT, family, etc.)
State (if USA), Province (if Canada), or other country

Download Evaluation and Learning Assessment Form now.

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Certificates are sent as .pdf email attachments.