Adaptive Art Supplies for Students with Visual Impairments

I recently (finally!) was able to alter some art materials for one of my students. She has visual impairments, and due to her cognitive and physical disabilities, it is also difficult to test just how much she is visually impaired. She has not been in a school environment very much, and frequently has temper tantrums when guided to hold school materials and complete tasks. She occasionally explores an item by touch and smell, and inspecting visually, but then will throw it when she is finished. So our basic goals for her are for her to tolerate assistance, hold objects when asked, and not throw them when she is finished. :)

To that end, we wanted to increase her ability to engage with art materials. There is a product called Carousel of Textures that is made just for this purpose--increasing textural contrast and interest in order to increase engagement or ability to locate items. You can also explore your local crafts store and look for self adhesive sheets of corrugated paper, sandblock sheets, fun foam, glitter foam, felt, and velour. Then you simply cut a strip, wrap it around your item, and voila, increased texture that can help with 1) visually locating the item (if you use a highly contrasting color of material), 2) engagement in object exploration, and 3) ability to grip. With her temper tantrums, we feel like this student may be very sensitive to touch, and so I chose to use a velour texture. It is enough contrast for her to notice, but a soft texture that will hopefully not be irritating!

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