VIDBE-Q Volume 65 Issue 4
impairment who don not possess the most basic skills to manage adult living. We
all know TVIs who continue to say that they cannot find time to teach the ECC.
Refuting that position, however, are the many TVIs who are finding ways to
implement the ECC in schools today. Compiled within the pages of this issue of
the Visual Impairment and Deafblind Quarterly, in fact, are examples of the
innovative strategies that some of our most creative and committed TVIs are using
to find ways to fit needed instruction in these skills in students' programs.
If we are going to achieve a time when students with visual impairments leave
school fully prepared to participate in adult endeavors—relationships, work,
recreation, community—then many more professionals, like the ones highlighted
in this issue, are going to have to find new ways of meeting their students'
academic and functional needs and share those strategies with colleagues. The
impact of these efforts, however, is limited; to influence change on a broader scale,
more collective action may be necessary to achieve the outcomes we desire.
Fundamental to such collective action will be increasing the involvement of
parents of children who are blind and who have low vision. More supportive and
intensive early intervention services informed by recommended practices of both
early childhood educators and teachers of students with visual impairments will be
needed. We will need to help parents understand early what the ECC is, what
acquisition of these skills means to their children's long-term development, and
