Our most recent iPad Grant for children with cortical visual impairment (CVI) took place in May of this year. We were thrilled to award the package to Allan and his family.
Allan received:
A 16GB iPad with Retina Display, a copy of our CVI-specific app: Tap-n-See Now, and a copy of our book about CVI: Little Bear Sees: How Children with Cortical Visual Impairment Can Learn to See.
From his mother:
Allan’s story began as a 23 week preemie. They began watching his eyes at two months for Retinopathy of Prematurity. We soon learned that he had the worst form (Rush Disease) and to save his vision he needed immediate surgery. Surgery went well and we believed we were out of the woods. By nine months old I had noticed he wasn’t really looking at us or reaching for anything so the eye doctor came to us with a diagnosis; cortical blindness. We were devastated, among all his disabilities we now had blindness. We didn’t do any research on it since he was finally being released from the hospital to go home.
The new chapter began when we got home. We were put in contact with Early Intervention services and they quickly brought in the ND School for the Blind. We then began services with them and started becoming educated on CVI. Hope had been restored to us that Allan could see. Through years of work, some of the issues of CVI are resolved or further along the road of resolving. Complexity of things is still a big issue as well as some harder to resolve characteristics of CVI. We continue to work with him and our hopes with this iPad is that it will open more doors visually and communicatively as well as improving his life overall.
Allan’s story is another example of a family who refused to believe a diagnosis of cortical blindness. They have seen great improvements! We hope this iPad package will help him continue to improve his vision.
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