Division on Visual Impairments

VIDBE-Q 65.2 Spring Convention Issue-Portland 2020

A quarterly newsletter from the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Visual Impairments containing practitioner tips for Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments, Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialists, and other professionals.

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VIDBE-Q Volume 65 Issue 2 51 Next, if a child was above a level 5 of dual sensory loss, but not primarily receiving tactile communication, the teacher was considered not matching the child's expected receptive modality. If the child was below a level 5 of dual sensory loss, then the primary communication modality would default to whether the hearing or vision loss was more significant. If the child had a more significant hearing loss than vision loss, visual communication would be considered a match. If the child had a more significant vision loss than a hearing loss, verbal communication would be considered a match. If the child's dual sensory loss was under a 4, but with equal levels of hearing and vision loss, either visual or verbal communication would be considered a match. Two distinct groups were formed in our sample, with 7 teachers who were considered matching and 8 teachers who were not considered matching. The ultimate goal is for the teacher's communication to match the learner with DB's expected receptive modality, a modality he or she can fully access, while also modeling a modality that could potentially be used expressively by the student. A tactile threshold is a helpful way for teachers to think about how to support a learner with dual sensory loss and whether this matching is occurring. If adults in classrooms are not even modeling communication with the student's strongest modality in mind, then the student does not even have a chance to get in the communication game. Simply making teachers, paraprofessionals, and related

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