Page 75 - SEN113 SEN Magazine July-August 2021-V3

Sensory Sensory support for students with Cerebral Vision Impairments Dr Jonathan Waddington explores the issue of CVI. 75 Cerebral Vision Impairments can affect as many as one in thirty children, yet it can be hard to identify in a classroom So, you have a student in your class who’s bumping into other students in the playground, often seems distracted in the classroom, and has a meltdown whenever there’s a whole school assembly. These behaviours might seem like red flags for a range of learning difficulties related to conditions such as developmental coordination disorder, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, or autism. On the other hand, these could be indications of a sensory processing disorder such as Cerebral Vision Impairment (CVI). What is cerebral vision impairment? Recent studies have indicated the prevalence of CVIs has been significantly under-appreciated in the UK. As many as one child in a primary school classroom of thirty students may have learning difficulties associated with CVI. Part of the issue with identifying these students and giving them appropriate support is that experts still aren’t fully agreed on a definition of CVI and how it should be diagnosed. Additionally, many of the “Significantly under-appreciated in the UK” behaviours associated with CVI overlap with the behaviours we commonly observe in other developmental conditions. This lack of clarity can lead to sensory needs being missed or misattributed to other learning difficulties. The current working definition of CVI, at least in the UK, is a ‘verifiable vision dysfunction that cannot be attributed to disorders of the anterior visual pathways or any potentially co-occurring ocular impairment’. What that means in layman’s terms, is that the brain is not able to consistently process sensory information from the eyes, or interpret that information senmagazine.co.uk SEN113