Vision Language Learning Communication: An Approach to AAC for Students with CVI

Collaboration means breaking down silos. During this 1 hour webinar, two professionals, a speech-language pathologist and a vision educator, will discuss current challenges facing children with CVI who use AAC approaches and the professionals and family members who live and work with them. Frameworks will be introduced that may help teams organize interventions across multiple domains, over time and improve the outcomes of these children.

Learner Objectives

Participants will be able to: 

• List reasons why interprofessional approaches to language, learning, communication and participation need to be grounded in evidenced-based, ongoing assessments of functional vision.
• Identify components of two frameworks (Roman-Lanzy, 2018, 2019) designed to support professionals and family members in addressing  communication/language access needs over time and across contexts.
• Discuss an ongoing research project that presenters are engaged in to (1) identify current gaps in training in CVI and AAC and (2) document retrospectively outcomes and trajectories across domains of students with CVI and severe speech and language impairments at The Bridge School.  

 

Your presenters:

Dr. Christine Roman-Lantzy: 

Christine Roman was raised in Michigan and received degrees in Elementary Education and Special Education/Visual Impairment at Michigan State University. She worked as an itinerant teacher of the visually impaired in the greater Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area for 17 years prior to becoming a Research Assistant in the Vision Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. While at Pitt, she completed studies in Orientation & Mobility and received a Master’s Degree in Medically Fragile/High Risk Infants. Her doctoral studies were also completed at Pitt where she completed a Ph.D. in 1996; her dissertation, Validation of an Interview Instrument to Identify Behaviors Characteristic of Cortical Visual Impairment in Infants revealed that caregivers of infants can reliably report regarding the presence or absence of the characteristics of CVI. Dr. Roman is the Director of The Pediatric View Program at The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA and a former Project Leader of the CVI Project at The American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, KY. She has lectured extensively regarding the CVI educational materials she has developed. These materials include: The CVI Range an assessment of functional vision, and The CVI Resolution Chart & CVI/O&M Resolution Chart used to plot and monitor progress both of which will be available in a book in press (working title, CVI: Identification, Assessment & Intervention) with The American Foundation for the Blind.

 

Dr. Sarah Blackstone:
 

Dr Sarah W. Blackstone is past president and fellow of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) and a founder and board member of its US Chapter. Dr. Blackstone is a contributing author to Cortical Visual Impairment: Advanced Principles, where she addresses the AAC needs of children with cortical visual impairment.