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Ana Veljanovska

IDENTIFYING AUTISM IN CHILDREN WITH BLINDNESS AND VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS

Often in working with children with blindness or visual impairments we are enchanting children with some specific stereotypic behaviors, identified as "blindizms”. Parents and professionals noted that many of these behaviors are the same as or similar to those behaviors seen in students with autism. These similarities led professionals to pursue more information about autism and its relationship to blindness. To assist in this process the professionals from Oregon School for the blind developed some guidelines to compare the characteristics observed in children with blindness and autism alone, across four domains: language and communication, relating to people, discrepancies in developmental rates and responses to sensory stimuli.