Sight inspection

Not all vision impairment is caused by damage to the eyes.

In many cases the link between the eye and the brain is damaged, either at birth or because of a head injury, causing vision to fluctuate.

Lindsay Hillier, the program director at the Ontario Foundation for Visually Impaired Children, said cortical visual impairment is the leading cause of visual impairment in the Western Hemisphere, and often goes misdiagnosed.

“I think what happens is children go for an eye exam and it comes out that everything is fine. They may think something is happening, but because they had an eye exam and the eyes were fine they’ll think that it’s fine,” Hillier said.

“So (a diagnosis) gives confirmation that even though the eyes are fine, there is something happening and you can draw attention to it and really focus on the strategies you need to do.”

Hillier, based in southern Ontario, said a session on Monday at the Thunder Bay District Health Unit was aimed at educating professionals who work closely with children – therapists, early childhood educators and resource teachers – on strategies to deal with the disease should they encounter it.

“There’s not a cure, because it’s coming out of the fact there is neurological damage at some level. But definitely the brain can rewire how it’s thinking and learn to process the information faster. The more practice, the better it gets,” Hillier said.

Dimming some of the background clutter is one of the first steps to ensuring a child encounters fewer problems with the disease.

“It can be really, really busy, and that’s really hard for those children’s brains to process that information. It’s too much information coming in, too much visual noise. So using placemats, or using a divider or a border around … is one of the big strategies,” Hiller said.

“As well, oftentimes these children have a hard time looking at something that is stationary, so a gentle movement of an object will really increase their use of vision for that object.”

Cathy Farrell of the Thunder Bay District Health Unit said CVI isn’t an overwhelming problem in Thunder Bay, but there are children with the disease who are not being properly diagnosed because there’s not enough awareness of it in the overall community.

“The speaker told us about a number of strategies that can be used, and if a child responds to that, chances are they may have CVI,” Farrell said.

The new tricks they learned could go a long way to helping CVI-afflicted children make the most of the vision they have.

“If you try a couple of these strategies, they may see it,” she said.