• Students With Visual Impairment

  • Mission Statement

    The Coeur d'Alene School District provides specially designed instruction to students whose visual impairment adversely affects their educational performance.  The vision support program is dedicated to providing students with individualized strategies and providing instruction in the visual compensatory skills necessary for them to access their educational program.  The program provides services to support the established curriculum for visually impaired students from preschool through age 21 in regular or special education classrooms.

  • Vision Services

    Vision support is provided by a Certified Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments within the educational setting to students who have a documented visual impairment that adversely affects educational performance.  Students may receive instruction in compensatory skills relating to blindness or visual impairment, including braille instruction.

    Services for eligible students may include (but are not limited to):

    • Braille Instruction
    • Learning Media Assessments
    • Functional Vision Evaluations
    • Provision of large print text books/reading books/audio books
    • Assistive Technology (e.g. speech to text/text to speech; keyboarding)
    • Specific Competencies as outlined in the Expanded Core Curriculum such as visual efficiency skills, independent living skills, career education, rec/leisure skills, organizational skills, and social skills
    • Collaboration and consultation with regular education teachers, agencies, parents and other therapists
    • Orientation and Mobility Training

     

  • Orientation and Mobility Services

    Orientation and Mobility training is provided by a Certified Orientation and Mobility specialist (COMS) and is offered as a related service to eligible students enrolled in the vision support program.  This training prepares students to negotiate their environment safely, efficiently, and independently in indoor and outdoor, familiar and unfamiliar settings.

    Orientation and Mobility Services include instruction in the following, as appropriate:

    • Spatial and environmental concents
    • Use of information received by the senses (such as sound, temperature and vibrations) to establish, maintain, or regain orientation and line of travel (e.g., using sound at a traffic light to cross the street)
    • Use of a long cane
    • Visual efficiency skills as they relate to travel
    • Use of low vision devices and other travel aids
    • Mapping skills/use of resources such as Google Maps.

     

  • Contact Us:

    Coeur d'Alene School District personnel working with students with visual impairment can be contacted at:

     

    Melissa Adams

    Visually Impaired Specialist

    maadams@cdaschools.org