According to 2013 data from the American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014), an estimated 668,000 American children and youth ages 5 to 21 are blind or have trouble seeing. Of those, over 159,000 (almost 24%) speak a language other than English at home. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) guarantees that if these children have a visual impairment or other disability which impacts their access to education, then they are eligible for special education services, including individualized evaluation and educational supports and instruction. At the same time, both IDEA and Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act require special provisions for English-language learners. IDEA requires that testing and evaluation materials should be “administered in the child's native language or mode of communication unless it is technically not feasible to do so” (IDEA, 2004, § 612).
The intersection of these two educational (and legal) issues – governing the rights of students who are English-language learners and the rights of children with disabilities – has not been fully addressed for children who are blind or visually impaired. Questions that have to be answered include:
- How can we provide a full, individual evaluation for a student who is both visually impaired and an English-language learner? What do evaluators need to know? What must we do to avoid misidentification of students based on language fluency rather than disability?
- How can we provide the best instruction – especially early literacy instruction – for students who are English-language learners with visual impairments? If a school is providing reading instruction in student’s native language, what can we do about braille instruction? What about audio materials?
To raise awareness of these issues, and especially to shed light on issues surrounding psychoeducational assessment, the AFB Public Policy Center arranged to interview Dr. Olaya Landa-Vialard, assistant professor at Illiniois State University and Coordinator of the Special Education in Low Vision and Blindness program. Dr. Landa-Vialard is also an Educational Diagnostician and a certified teacher of students with visual impairments. She has previously served as the Lead Bilingual Educational Diagnostician for the Program for Students with Visual Impairments for Houston Independent School District in Texas, and her dissertation research investigated the assessment practices and procedures used by educational diagnosticians when assessing students who are bilingual with visual impairments. We have published this interview in both English and Spanish on the AFB Public Policy Center’s webpages, along with other bilingual assessment resources developed by Dr. Landa-Vialard.
We hope this information will be informative for everyone interested in education for bilingual/English-language learners with visual impairments, as well for as those who are following and advocating for special education policies. The resources provided by Dr. Landa-Vialard will help teachers, parents, school psychologists, and educational diagnosticians to improve assessment practices and service delivery for this growing population of students. We welcome your feedback and comments on this blog post, or directly to Rebecca Sheffield (Senior Policy Researcher at AFB).
Additional reading suggestion from JVIB:
Topor, I., & Rosenblum, P. (2013). English-language learners: Experiences of teachers of students with visual impairments who work with this population. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 107(2), 79-91. Available at http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pubjvib.asp?DocID=jvib070202
References:
- U.S. Census Bureau (2014). "ACS Public Use Microdata Sample." 2013 American Community Survey. Retrieved from http://dataferrett.census.gov
- Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (2004). Retrieved from http://idea.ed.gov/download/statute.html
