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Abstract:
Children who are identified as visually impaired frequently have a functional vision assessment as one way to determine how their visual impairment affects their educational performance. The CVI Range is a functional vision assessment for children with cortical visual impairment. The purpose of the study presented here was to examine the reliability of the CVI Range.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004), children who are identified as having a visual impairment are required to have additional assessments to determine how the disability affects their educational performance. Medical reports and visual acuities may help determine eligibility for educational services, but they do not provide useful information about the impact of a particular child's vision loss on that child's education (Teplin, 1995). Instead, educational impact is determined through a functional vision assessment or a learning media assessment or both that helps delineate how a child uses vision to perform activities in the classroom or activities of daily living (Burnett & Sanford, 2008; Langley, 1998). On the basis of this information, appropriate developmental and educational modifications and accommodations can be determined that will give the child access to the educational curriculum.
Most current functional vision assessments, such as ISAVE, the Individualized Systematic Assessment of Visual Efficiency (Langley, 1998), and the Functional Vision and Learning Media Assessment (Burnett & Sanford, 2008), have been based on the needs of children with ocular visual impairments. Children with visual impairments that are due to brain damage, or cortical visual impairment (CVI), have unique visual characteristics that are often different from those of children with ocular visual impairments (Jan & Groenveld, 1993). Despite these documented differences in the visual skills of children with ocular versus cortical visual impairment, the functional vision assessments that are currently used in the field rely heavily on the needs of children with ocular visual impairment and do not take into account the unique characteristics of children with CVI.
In response to this need, Roman-Lantzy (2007) developed a functional vision assessment that appropriately addresses the visual characteristics of children with CVI, the CVI Range. However, to be considered a worthwhile instrument, an assessment needs to have sound psychometric properties, such as reliability and validity. This article describes a study that assessed the reliability...