A) Characteristics of Sensory Impairments
- Generally behind sighted peers in academics
- Relatively unimpaired in language ability
- Concept development can depend on tactile experiences
- Unable to use visual imagery, spatial information
- May display withdrawn, dependent, socially immature or repetitive movements
- Academic levels significantly below hearing peers
- Reading most affected, spelling problems, limited writing production
- Dependence on EA, Withdrawal, less social maturity, difficulty making friends
- Voice quality problems, language expression and comprehension difficulty, poor speech production
- Intellectualy ability similar to hearing peers
While severe vision loss is easily identified, mild losses are harder to assess. School examinations and referrals to eye doctors when appropriate, can determine the extent of problems and modifications required.
Visual Impairment Symptoms (Hallahan and Kauffmann, 2003)
- Complaints about eyes, vision, blurriness, dizzyness, headaches
- Appearance of crossed, encrusted, red-rimmed, inflamed or watery eyes
- Behaviour like excessive eye-rubbing, blinking, squinting, holding books close, distance vision problems or close use of eyes for reading
Hearing impairments are typically hidden and become apparent only when communication is required.
Subsets are: deafness which is loss so severe that speech cannot be understood through the ear unaided, and hard of hearing which describes loss that makes it difficult not impossible to understand through the ear unaided. Symptoms include:
- hearing loss, poor auditory reception, speech recognition depressed, impaired speech discrimination, cognitive delay, articulation problems, lower achievement scores and a range of other symptoms that can be explored further at the Canadian Association for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology site and the ASHA website.
The involvement of Educational Assistants (EAs) like sign language interpreters, brailleists and recorders is very important for effective intervention with sensory impairment. They will typically benefit the entire class, they can assist with reading and writing outputs and provide a range of consultation and support for teachers. Recent budget cuts have reduced the allocation of these resources, requiring teachers to ensure they are familiar with effective modifications.
A classroom workshop by a visually impaired secondary student, Alex Jurgensen, provided a range of helpful strategies for teaching visually impaired and other sensory impaired students with excerpts captured below:
i) Strategies
- Advance preparation is required - for instance, modified texts require several month's lead time
- TBS model - Strong collaboration between teacher, braillist and student
- Ematerials - Software that produces text to voice and ensure comments are produced in-line
- Avoid fill-in-the-blanks instruments
- Review IEP for any students with sensory impairments
- When organizing groups, consider right mix of partners good at explaining exercises
- Use tactile versus visual descriptors
ii) Blindness in Society
- Don't worry about cliches, no need to adapt
- Directions should be done in adapted fashion (eg. clock-face technique, Cardinal Directions)
- Use common sense to determine exceptions
- Apply fairness in assessment - the impaired student must have the mats to be tested on them
- Be yourself
- Use Assistive Learning Devices (ALDs) - Assist amplification, communications, alerting
- Include interpreters in IEP team process
- Check student understanding regularly
- Seat the interpreter so the student can see teacher and interpreter
- Be sensitive to interpreter "time-lag"
- Provide copies of all visual materials before class
- Brief the interpreter on topics and format
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