There are so many apps out there today to help you do EVERYTHING…I have just discovered one that can help you tune your guitar which has been pretty handy as Eva has started Guitar lessons. With the frequency of app releases, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with what will and won’t be engaging. I do believe however I hit the jackpot early on with one organisation who develop apps for those who are vision impaired.
Ebenezer School and Home for the Visually Impaired has developed some simple but impressively effective apps for those who have been diagnosed with CVI. I stumbled across the apps whilst searching through the iTunes app store very early into our diagnosis, I would say about 4 months post-diagnosis. Take a look at the apps we have been using for several years, and Eva still does not tire of them.
One thing I have to mention….they are all free! Yippee!
Eye Movement Training
Eye Movement Training is a visual tracking app which we found to be perfect for Eva to increase her stamina in visual attention and continuously follow an object. The user can choose different objects to track, their speeds, direction of movement and size. Eva found it fun to choose to follow the green turtle, blue car and yellow ball. When we started using this app, Eva could only track the object for about 10 seconds before losing it visually, but she can now track it quite easily without suffering visual fatigue or losing sight of the object. Ideal for those in Phase I.
Find The Same
This app is a favorite with Eva and her 5 year old brother who has no vision deficiencies. The purpose of the game is to match the objects with the card dealt – this app aims to increase the ability distinguish objects and hand-eye coordination. We started with the coloured shapes and have progressed onto the coloured fruit with some success; the tough ones for us are the black and white images. Perfect for those in late Phase II, Phase III.
Dot to Dot
This is the most challenging app of them all for us to work with. We are struggling to find letter writing apps that are fun, but it may very well be that Eva is just not at the stage of holding much interest in ‘learning’ to write – I put the word ‘learning’ in quotation marks as Eva loves to write with a marker, she tries her very hardest but most of the time it is not legible. She wants to know how to write but I don’t believe she has the visual attentiveness to do it effectively. The Dot to Dot app uses large numbered dots to guide the user how to write letters and numbers, with the red dot showing where to start and how to continue. A great free tool for those in late Phase III.
The Ebenezer apps are a great free tool to use for working on some aspects of the CVI Assessment range, especially the Eye Movement Training which we have found to be very beneficial. As I mentioned above, there are so many apps out there to try, I do believe the three above are a great place to start in each phase of the CVI range, before proceeding to any paid apps.
Have you used these apps? I would love to hear your experiences!