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Visual Rehabilitation
Millions of Americans have reduced eyesight, restricting their daily activities, mobility and employability. These partially-sighted people possess some visual capacity, yet many are unable to read even with ordinary glasses.
A comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to vision rehabilitation can help the vast majority of partially-sighted people learn to use their remaining visual capacity to its fullest and to be as independent as possible. This includes those people who have corrected visual acuity in the better eye of 20/50 or less, and/or a field of vision of 20 degrees or less. Services are also designed for those people learning to see with one eye.
Some of the more common conditions helped by visual rehabilitation include:
Visual rehabilitation is similar to rehabilitation for other kinds of impairments. Just as a stroke victim who has lost the use of one arm receives occupational therapy to learn how to accomplish necessary tasks, low-vision rehabilitation provides comparable training.
Visual rehabilitation includes:
Who can benefit from visual rehabilitation?
A comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to vision rehabilitation can help the vast majority of partially-sighted people learn to use their remaining visual capacity to its fullest and to be as independent as possible. This includes those people who have corrected visual acuity in the better eye of 20/50 or less, and/or a field of vision of 20 degrees or less. Services are also designed for those people learning to see with one eye.
Some of the more common conditions helped by visual rehabilitation include:
- Macular degeneration
- Diabetic retinopathy and
- Glaucoma
- Eye muscle misalignments
- Blurred vision
- Sensitivity to light, glare sensitivity
- Reading difficulties; words appear to move
- Comprehension difficulty
- Attention and concentration difficulty
- Memory difficulty
- Double vision
- Aching eyes
- Headaches with visual tasks
- Inability to maintain visual contact
- Difficulties with:
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- Ocular pursuits (eye tracking ability)
- Saccadics (difficulties with shifting gaze quickly from one point to the other)
- Accommodative inability (focusing)
- Binocular vision (eye alignment)
What to expect from visual rehabilitation
Visual rehabilitation is similar to rehabilitation for other kinds of impairments. Just as a stroke victim who has lost the use of one arm receives occupational therapy to learn how to accomplish necessary tasks, low-vision rehabilitation provides comparable training.
Visual rehabilitation includes:
- Evaluation by a low-vision rehabilitation doctor, to determine the amount of your useable sight and prescribe appropriate optical devices
- Training in using your peripheral vision to read
- Training for daily activities
- On-site assessment of home or workplace to identify barriers to success. Recommendations for lighting and adaptations to increase safety, efficiency and independence.
- Professional fitting for visual aids like magnifiers and high-power lenses, and training in their use
- Training in use of state-of-the-art technology such as closed-circuit televisions, computer programs and electronic reading programs
- Referrals by social workers to coordinate with state and community agencies and identify financial resources
- Access to information about large-print books, books on tape, community services, radio reading services, and eye disorders that cause vision loss
- It may also include counseling and support groups
- In children, a "lazy eye" or amblyopia is an eye where the vision cannot be fully correctible by the use of lenses. It needs additional stimulation through eye exercises, which may improve the vision. A "turned eye" or strabismus sometimes needs to be surgically corrected, and sometimes can be helped by specific eye exercises to re-educate the visual system. Visual biofeedback is used to teach the visual system to re-align itself.
- In children and adults, more subtle eye muscle misalignments or focusing problems can cause visual discomfort, eye strain, loss of comprehension or concentration when reading, and loss of place. These problems can often be helped through eye exercises, which build up reserve ability and help in situations of stress or fatigue.
