CVI learning guide

Education & Access

Welcome to the CVI Education and Access learning guide! These are curated resources from our larger pool of CVI content to help you get started with empowering access for individuals with CVI — From understanding CVI assessments, how CVI impacts students in their daily routines, to how to adapt educational materials and common CVI teaching strategies. Peruse these tools and join our CVI Educator Hub to ask questions, get answers, and engage with the community.

CVI Assessments
An abacus
Accessible learning
Two speech bubbles
Communication and CVI
 Calendar systems
Teacher reading in front of a chalkboard icon
Educator hub

CVI assessments

Students with CVI require comprehensive and holistic assessments to understand how CVI impacts access to learning and the environment, the compensatory skills the student uses, the appropriate learning media needed to access the curriculum, and environmental considerations. Assessment drives successful program planning, instruction, specialized learning, accommodations, environmental changes, and service delivery.

Components of a comprehensive CVI assessment include a file review, interviews with parents/caregivers, members of the student’s school team, and the student (if applicable), direct observations across multiple environments at different times of day, direct assessment, and robust report with recommendations.

More about CVI assessments
The Perkins CVI Protocol
Back to top

Accessible learning

Individuals with CVI require a multisensory approach to learning. No matter how CVI manifests, there may be moments, specific situations, or full days where vision is unreliable and inconsistent—where individuals with CVI choose to use other sensory channels and strategies to learn and interact with their world. 

What is a multisensory approach? A multisensory approach incorporates different sensory channels into the learning process—auditory, tactile, visual, kinesthetic (movement), olfactory (smell), and taste. This approach uses a wide range of design tools for access match to a student’s profile. Some examples include:

  • Autonomy, agency, advocacy: Choices for access, model permission/consent, ongoing data collection, self-advocacy skills, calendar systems, total communication systems
  • Auditory: Audiobooks, screen readers, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, images descriptions, verbal descriptions of items, people, and the environment
  • Kinesthetic: Movement as part of learning, movement breaks, pro tactile sign language, drawing on own body
  • Tactile: Tangibles (manipulatives, objects, models), braille, tactile diagrams, white cane
  • Visual: Color, spacing, reduce clutter, environmental supports, movement, light, visual instructional supports, and visual breaks
  • Collaboration with students, families, and school team
Specialized learning approach for students with CVI
Back to top

Communication and CVI

Many children have CVI compounded with other disabilities that can make communication more complex.

A total communication approach allows for learners to be able to communicate all day every day, using whatever mode of communication is needed in the moment. People with CVI have a right to an individualized, flexible and inclusive approach to communication rooted in comprehensive assessment and ongoing evaluation.

AAC, or Augmentative and Alternative Communication, can help a student communicate with a wide variety of actions and systems. They’re often grouped by technology use: no-tech, low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech devices. All of these AAC systems usually co-exist within a greater system of communication to form total communication.

Low-tech communication supports include recordable swithes, where you can record a message and activate the switch to express it, picture communication boards, and books.

Mid-tech communication supports are simple, leveled speech-generating devices, dedicated dynamic screen devices, and tablets with communication applications, like a Go Talk Nine.

High-tech communication supports include the use of tablets with a wider array of vocabulary, eye gaze devices, and text-to-speech devices and applications.

CVI affects everyone differently, so creating the right AAC system is unique to each person, especially with other diagnoses that affect communication. Factors like backlighting, portability, accessibility, clutter, contrast, visual fatigue, and motivation play a role. We’ll explore how to address some of these when designing AAC systems for individuals with CVI.

Resource hub on CVI and Complex Communication Needs
Back to top

Calendar systems

A calendar system, or an accessible calendar, helps students with CVI manage time, reduce anxiety, develop academic skills, build independence, and improve communication. Since every student with CVI is different, their calendar systems should be too. These systems should grow and adapt as the child learns and develops.

Click through each part of our calendar system series below to start building this essential tool for learning.

  1. An introduction to tailored calendar systems that are accessible and meaningful
  2. Preparing to make a CVI-friendly calendar system through observation and assessment
  3. Designing an individualized and accessible calendar system for kids with CVI 
  4. Supporting learning opportunities across the school day with a calendar system
Boy pointing to his visual/tactile calendar system

Back to top

CVI educator hub

Together, our work can improve outcomes for students with CVI.

A teacher and student both smile as they use tactile objects in a classroom setting.

This is a space for educators and providers working with kids and adults with CVI to learn, network, share resources, and build community. We know how hard you work, the systematic realities you navigate, and how much you want to serve and empower your students with CVI. We’ve got you.

Take me to the CVI Educator Hub

We encourage educators of students with CVI to:

Back to top

Previously: When to suspect CVI

Learn when to suspect CVI, then discover more about CVI diagnosis tips, how to find a doctor that can diagnose CVI, and explore diagnosis stories from individuals with CVI and their families.

When to suspect CVI
A student sits at a desk and works with an AAC device and a laptop.

Next: Medical & Research

Learn about the NIH’s CVI initiative and the brain’s visual system, plus explore our CVI research library, interviews with leading CVI researchers and clinicians, and get involved in CVI research studies.

Medical & Research