;
Lorem Ipsum Dolor Spring 2016
2
puzzling situations on our respective journeys, we can draw from the things we have
learned from our professional home to address the needs of students in complex
situations. It is a place that we return to, that we protect and grow, and that helps
sustain our specialized areas of focus- in this case special education for students with
visual impairment and those with deafblindness.
CEC's Division on Visual Impairment has long supported and been supported
by professionals in the field of deafblindness through its conferences, competency
development activities, and publications. This year the Division took another step
forward in recognizing the unique needs of students who are deafblind and the special
education professionals that serve them by adopting deafblindness in its name. With
this new name, we have fresh opportunities to grow division membership, to ensure
that the needs of students with low incidence disabilities are represented within the
CEC, and to intentionally address the national gaps in special education service
provision that students who are deafblind experience.
As one of the rarest of the low-incidence disability groups, students who are
deafblind face enormous challenges, not only in accessing environmental information
or in developing communication, but in being recognized as a distinct disability group
within educational systems. Parents and family members of individuals who are
deafblind often describe their ongoing efforts to educate local IEP teams about the
unique instructional strategies that will support their family members with
deafblindness (NCDB, 2012). Teachers of the visually impaired, who often serve
students who are deafblind on their caseloads, have expressed feeling ill prepared to
serve students with dual sensory impairments in the areas of literacy, assistive
technology, and in communication development (Bruce, 2007;
7
