VIDBE-Q Volume 65 Issue 4
supported in local school programs in the previous two decades had entered
adulthood. Their parents, with whom he had established close bonds and still
communicated, reported to him feeling despair as they watched their bright, well-
educated children, who had been so successfully included in school, experience
failure in typical adult behaviors, such as holding a job, establishing families, and
engaging in the community. Such unrealized promise, such tragedy, spurred Dr.
Hatlen to both thought and action.
It had become increasingly clear that inclusion while in elementary, middle,
and high school was insufficient preparation for students with visual impairments.
Something more was needed to adequately prepare these youngsters for adulthood.
Already, by the mid-1960s, when orientation and mobility was first being taught to
school-age students, an indication of what this "something" might be—specialized
instruction—was emerging. In the same way that students were not able to learn
safe travel skills by sitting in class with sighted peers, thoughtful educators were
beginning to think that it was possible that students who are blind or who have low
vision need specific, targeted instruction in those skills that their peers with vision
learn primarily by observing others and that this instruction cannot always occur in
the general classroom.
My first introduction to what is now known as the ECC occurred when I was a
master's degree student at San Francisco State University in the late 1970s. Dr.
