Characteristics of Students With Visual Disability

Visual disabilities encompass two types of handicaps for students, both of which have their own implications for teaching strategies and methodologies. Vision-disabled/ impaired students are either blind or partially sighted. Students with visual learning disabilities, also referred to as nonverbal learning disabilities, display processing problems with visual information and reading.

Vision Impairment

Individuals with visual disabilities must rely on the other four senses for spatial object information, equilibrium and kinesthesis. When teaching students with vision impairments or disabilities, it's also important to note that the remaining vision of a student can vary from day to day, depending on the disability, health, diet, stress or medication, according to the Encyclopedia of Blindness and Vision Impairment. As a result, a teacher for the visually disabled must help his students to rely more on using their other senses, especially for balance as they are learning to cope with their disability.

Teaching the Vision Disabled Students

Due to the varying nature of visual disabilities and the range of impairment from partial to full blindness, teachers must use a variety of methods to reach their students. Handouts should have large print or Braille, or raised line drawings for graphical information. Students should be encouraged to use tape recorders and audio books. Teachers should speak upon entering or leaving the classroom and give verbal notices to the class regarding changes in the spatial arrangement of the room.

Learning Disabilities

Apart from disabilities in which an individual loses all or part of her sight, special-education teachers may encounter students with disabilities related to visual learning, such as dyslexia. Students with these disabilities may have difficulty processing visual information found in graphs and charts, or they may experience letter and number reversals. Students may also display a lack of motivation to read or complain about their eyes hurting. Examples of how these learning disabilities may manifest include re-reading or skipping lines when reading, jumbling words and letters together, poor handwriting and difficulty with other fine motor skills.

Compensating for Disability

In characterizing individuals with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD), students typically have average to high IQs and may display an above-average vocabulary and memory. NLD students are commonly gifted in auditory processing and learning styles, meaning that they learn through hearing rather than seeing. As students with NLD advance through grades, their disability will become more evident through coordination and balance problems, conceptual problem-solving issues and lack of social skills due to missing nonverbal communication cues, as well as displaying physical awkwardness.