Part IX – Visual Neurorehabilitation 2: Accommodation
About the Sample Activities
It is impractical to provide detailed commentary on these activities in such a short space, so I have decided to include more breadth than depth in this part to expose the reader to a more representative notion of what Optometric Vision Therapy (OVT) provides. Behavioral vision specialists spend 4 years studying diagnosis and management of diseases of the eye and the visual nervous system, physiological optics, human development, and multiple aspects of diagnosis and treatment of vision-based behavioural concerns. This is followed by ongoing work, training, and research into the field. It is, in other words, simply impossible to offer anything but a cursory overview of the domain in 10 Parts.
What is presented here and in Clinically Speaking Parts XIII and X will be elaborated over time, so I’ve taken the liberty of splitting it up into three sections by theme. You can also search the drboulet.com site for ‘Activity’ for a general list of activities, or search for a specific activity name to learn more. The online library will continue to evolve over time, so feel free to send us your comments / requests.
About Accommodation
Earlier parts of the course address the neuroanatomical substrates and behavioural implications of accommodation system, that is, our ability to focus light. What seems on the surface to be a simple idea, accommodative disorders are a common and significant class of Visual Impediments to Learning. Myopes are somewhat affected by accommodative concerns in the classroom, but not to the same degree as people with hyperopia, astigmatism, accommodative response/range concerns, and Convergence Insufficiency. Accommodative disorders are complicated by the Near Triad, discussed in Principles Part IV. It is important to remember that a child with accommodative concerns might never present with trouble if it were not for the extreme near visual demands of the text- and computer-based neo-traditional classroom. In other words, the way we teach poses an unreasonable load on some children, and this causes them to perform sub-optimally, and even exhibit other behavioural anomalies such as attention and hyperactivity concerns.
General Notes: Download the VT Workshop
- Pg 17 Intro
- Pg 17 Phoroptor Testing
- Pg 18-19: Nearpoint Retinoscopy Techniques
- Pg 19 – Accommodative Therapy
Sample activities
- Pg 20 Near/Far Hart Charts
- Pg 20 Monocular Accommodative Rock (MAR)
- Pg 21 Monocular Lens Sorting
- Pg 21 Split Pupil Rock (Bi-ocular Minus Lens Rock)
- Pg 22 Red Red Rock (Franzblau Rock)
- Pg 23 Binocular Accommodative Rock (BAR)