VIDBE-Q Volume 68 Issue 4
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maps, and going on community outings are some ways in which we can provide
students with visual impairment opportunities to interact with, build, and reinforce
literacy skills through O&M instruction.
Environmental Literacy
Remember the second definition of literacy? Environmental literacy fits
nicely into the definition of "competence or knowledge in a particular area"
(Oxford University Press, 2023), as it literally means to be competent or
knowledgeable about a particular area. Being literate about an area means one
knows the characteristics of it; what the objects in it look like, what they are named
or labeled, and what their functions are; and how it may fit into the "larger" picture
of other areas and/or the world. For example, what comes to your mind when you
think about a residential area in a suburban city in the United States? If houses,
driveways, mailboxes, lawns, sidewalks, fire hydrants, streets with low vehicular
traffic, and smaller part of a big city came to mind, you have the beginnings of
environmental literacy. Knowing and understanding that people live in houses; cars
move in / out and park in driveways; mail is delivered and stored in mailboxes;
sidewalks separate front lawns from parking strips / streets; cars drive on the street;
pedestrians are supposed to walk on sidewalks to be safe; and so on would be the
next level of building environmental literacy. Time needs to be on the learner's
side when it comes to developing environmentally literacy – it takes a lot of time to
