MOBILITY PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS WITH BLINDNESS AND LOW VISION IN AN INSTITUTION OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTAL OBSTACLES
[i]A visual impairment is any visual condition that impacts an individual’s ability to successfully complete the activities of everyday life. Educators classify visual impairments into three classifications: low vision, functionally blind, and totally blind. These classifications were made to establish the correct classroom approach to students with vision problems.
Low vision pertains to students who use their sense of sight as the prime sensory channel. Functionally blind students are those students with limited sight for tasks but require other sensory channels as hearing and touch to learn. Totally blind are those students who use the senses of touch and hearing for both functional and learning duties and tasks.
To better aid the student in an institutional environment with physical obstacles, it is greatly recommended that they first go through mobility training and an orientation. Mobility training is focused on an organized, effective and safe movement in an environment. Orientation is being familiar with the surroundings and creating up a position in harmony to the surrounding.
These teach the student to traverse the environment safety through the use of their remaining vision, if any, along with sounds and hearing sensitivities. The use of a cane, preferably white, is required to aid the student in checking for hindrances and steps.
The theory behind this is to better train the visually-impaired student in dealing with chance or accidental obstacles in a random physical surrounding, dealing with obstacles in a familiar environment, and expecting similarities of obstacles in similar surroundings.
Students with severe vision problems experiences movement difficulties especially in an institution where they are not familiar. Due to this, school activities as joining a school activity, are greatly affected, In addition, students with vision problems that are congenital in nature experience greater difficulties in learning spatial and environmental concepts which are concepts that are visually oriented.
The effect of visual impairment to learning is related to occurrence, type of impairment, severity, and other disabilities present in the student. In relation to this, all approaches, revisions, and plans in the classroom must be suited to deal on each student’s needs.
Students who have visual difficulties are not so inclined to explore and navigate their environment and to start interacting socially. Inability and lack of motivation to explore the surroundings may impact motor development. As visually functional students will find it hard to interact with a blind classmate, so is the visually-impaired classmate will find it difficult to relate to students with vision as they have no common experiences to share. This brings about an inadequate social skill. Visually-impaired students can even develop low self-respect and confidence thus restricting effective management of their own selves.
While a student is mobile, most of the student’s mental processes are focused on decoding information from surroundings and concluding whether the information gathered fits previous experiences. If so, this guarantees that they are on the right movement toward a certain destination.
Since vision is utilized in daily school activities, a blind student will have need of constant assistances from another person, another student, or teacher. Students who have suffered sudden vision loss require a longer adjustment period than those who were born visually-impaired, or to those who gradually lost their vision.
Students with visual problems may also experience problems related to light especially glaring lights, blind spots, color problems, or contrast problems. The amount of light in a classroom or in the immediate environment, tiredness, and emotions can also have an effect on visual functioning or loss on a student.
Also, even if students have the same level or type of visual impairment, each student is using their limited sight in a unique and different way from each other. Therefore, educators must know how each of their students is using their limited sight.
After being perceived by the sensory systems, skills learned are first stored in short-term memories prior to being collected in long-term memories. Inadequate or inefficient gathering of memories produces difficulty in mobility. It is strongly recommended that students practice constant mobility to be familiar with the surroundings.
[i] www.projectidealonline.org
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