Cerebral visual impairment. How much and how does my child see?

Abstract

Cerebral visual impairment, CVI, is the main cause of visual disability in childhood. Children with CVI have a brain injury or malformation that causes the dysfunction of the optical radiation and / or visual cortex, although the ocular system may also be affected. The alteration of the channels and /  or the centers of interpretation of the visual information produce a series of specific visual behaviors, apparently changing and contradictory, difficult to understand. The parents of these children need more than information. Family members are often disoriented because they do not know how they  can best help their children, and too often they receive contradictory instructions. It is necessary to make them understand that the brain injury is the cause of the atypical and sometimes disconcerting visual behaviors, and that in many occasions these behaviors have their explanation. A multidisciplinary team of the Educational Resources Center of the ONCE in Madrid (Ophthalmologist, Psychologist, Rehabilitation Technician and Teacher), decided to carry out a conference during the 2017/18 academic year so that the parents of these students know the differential characteristics of visual impairment cerebral, with special attention to its functional repercussions, with the aim of trying to understand better the visual behaviors of their children and the practices that can help improve their visual efficiency. This course has repeated the experience and has been extended with specific days for professionals of the Education of the Community of Madrid, proving the necessary of this training to have received more than a hundred inscriptions.