Resources for Those Who Have Recent Vision Impairments
It can be challenging to adapt to living with reduced vision, blindness, or vision through only one eye. Use the vision impairment resources on this page to help yourself or someone you care about continue to thrive with their new reality.
For kids, young adults, or older people who have lost all or part of their vision due to disease, accident, or some other cause, everything from reading to shopping to dressing to eating will be very different from how it used to be.
If you find yourself in that situation, or know someone who does, here you will find an array of teaching tools, information, and guides for people in a variety of situations.
Educational Resources for Vision Impaired Students
Optical Devices for Low Vision
For people with low vision, often they benefit from technology that helps them see farther or clearer in specific situations, such as driving, or in a classroom. On this site you’ll find several such devices to give you an idea of what’s possible.
How to Set Up a Classroom for Visually Impaired Students
For principals, teachers, or parents choosing to home school a child with vision impairment, there are strategies and tools you can use to make your instruction more effective at fully engaging such students.
This site walks you through several modules, including videos, with examples and recommendations for what to do.
If you can’t see very well, listening is your next best method for learning. And especially for younger kids, music and songs can make learning much more fun — and more effective. This site features a huge selection of simple songs that teach basic concepts for all the major subjects and much more.
Schools for the Blind
Different schools work best for different people, but two of the most well known schools for people with vision impairment are Perkins and the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
Resources Specifically for People with One Working Eye
Whether you are the person who has lost vision in one eye, or you are close to someone who has, everything begins with understanding your new reality. What has changed, and what remains the same?
Here is a selection of books for people with monocular vision. The list includes a book for kids with one eye, and a book in Spanish.
Tips for Getting Used to Having One Eye
For a quicker introduction to your new reality, this St. Jude page gives 11 tips to help you get used to living with just one working eye. For example, since you have lost depth perception, it’s easy to spill when pouring a drink. One tip suggests touching the pitcher to the edge of the cup before you begin pouring.
The page also gives five tips for parents of babies and toddlers with just one eye. Tips include letting them play with toys that roll, and making your child reach for things, rather than just handing stuff to them. These are ways to make them adept at using their vision.
Advice for Parents of Partially Sighted Kids
For insights into the psyche of kids with partial vision, learn from the experiences of a parent who has been there. This is one person’s experience, but it is very detailed and gets into the emotions, feelings, and frustrations of a child growing up with impaired vision, and how a loving parent can help them through it. This is very good reading.
Reading Resources
Here you’ll find loads of books and electronic books in braille, in addition to many other resources for kids and adults to help them stay engaged with the world.
This is another great choice for audio and braille books on all sorts of topics. They have music, magazines, books, kids stuff, and books in other languages.
More Vision Impairment Resources
The Vision of Children Foundation’s Family Support Network created this private Facebook Group for parents who have kids with visual impairment. This is a great place to go if you want to talk with other parents who will understand what you’re going through, get and give good advice, and feel encouraged.
Before joining the Facebook group, you can find some immediate tips for how to best help your child with their visual impairment. All kinds of basic information here makes this a great place to start.
The more severe your child’s visual impairment, the more you will need to adapt your home to protect them from injury and make their experience more successful. Here are some helpful tips for what to do, and what to avoid, as you re-imagine the functionality of your home.
You might be wondering why this isn’t in the reading section. The reason is because the Braille Bookstore is more like a superstore for all things vision impairment. It has way more than just books. It has toys, games, kitchen wares, talking clocks, and all kinds of things you had no idea even existed, but that a person with impaired vision will find extremely helpful. You’ll want to spend a lot of time exploring this one.
Computer Games for the Vision Impaired
Just like it sounds, this is a site with computer games specifically designed for people with low or impaired vision. They have free desktop games, as well as games for mobile devices.
Powerful Apps for Vision Impairment
There is more on this page than just apps, but the apps are the most powerful resource you’ll find here. They have apps that do things like take a photo of a printed document, and then read it back to you aloud.
You can also get an app that counts how much cash you are holding. To see these and other apps for the visually impaired, click here and scroll down toward the end of the page.
Resources for Adults New to Vision Loss
This page from the American Federation of the Blind includes a number of resources designed for adults who are experiencing a sudden or gradual loss in their vision.
A Quality Education for Everyone
Washington State School for the Blind is an exceptional institution that aims to ensure that every blink and low vision student in Washington has the services they need to succeed. Click here to learn more.
Local Stuff – State by State Breakdown
Want to find local resources and programs for people with vision impairment? This page provides a state by state breakdown. Just click on your state and see all the places you can go in your area.
If what we’ve given you isn’t enough, here’s a page with tons more stuff touching on a huge variety of helpful topics for people with vision impairment.
Do you have a favorite resources that’s not listed? Let us know!
