How Do Visual Impairments Affect Children

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Visual impairments affect children in an interesting way. Infants who are born with visual impairments have to learn how to navigate the world with incomplete messages from this sense, and have to gain the picture from their other senses. Blindness is not the only form of visual impairment that affect children, there is also problems with physical mechanisms of the eye, problems with visual activity, impairments to the muscular structure of the eye, and problems in visual perception. Each of these impairments come with their own set of difficulties. Visual impairments are also relatively common among young children. Approximately 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide, among that number 39 million of them are blind. Five in every 10,000 children up to the age of 16 are severely sight impaired/blind. About one half to two thirds of children with developmental delays have a visual impairment. Premature and very low birth weight babies are at a higher risk of having a visual impairment. Infants with more physical …show more content…
Infants with visual impairments will need extra support exploring the world. Infants with these problems will need help with cognitive needs, gross/fine motor needs, communication needs, and visual needs. The visually impaired child who is unable to see the complex process of putting together a meal within the family home, for example, has missed invaluable understanding of what causes things to happen in life. Only through experience- based learning does the blind or visually impaired child gain the personal validation of what the world is about in a way that makes sense to that individual. By repeated opportunities for hands- on experiences a visually impaired infant/toddler begins to internalize the characteristics and properties of the world outside