Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) results in a series of visual behaviors consistent with ventral and dorsal stream dysfunction, causing difficulty with visual attention and visual recognition. There are shared risk factors for both CVI and deafblindness, with 50% of the student population within the Deafblind Program at Perkins being diagnosed or medically suspected as having CVI. This poster session will identify risk factors, related challenges around visuospatial processing, visual field deficits, and impaired motion perception and raise questions around the consideration for assessment, including the visual accessibility of sign language, with the goal of supporting the perusal of future research.

Share data about deafblindness and sexuality; start a conversation. Our goal is to invite and inspire service providers and people who are deafblind globally, to open the dialogue and create awareness about sexuality and deafblindness.  This presentation will explore the idea of sex and sexuality and how the barriers, stigmas and complexities involved in supporting adults and seniors living with deafblindness, can be broken down by initiating and creating an open dialogue.  Resources on sexuality and adults living with deafblindness are either outdated or non-existent. Most common and prevalent publications on the subject relate to preparing children for developing their sexual identity.  Initiating a positive and open dialogue can create appropriate support to adults and seniors who are deafblind. Sexuality is a basic human need and not a privilege. Advocating and encouraging the person who is deafblind to embrace their identity and sexuality can lead to a healthier state of mind and well being. Sexuality is an integral part of the personality of everyone: man, woman and child; it's a basic need and aspect of human beings that cannot be separated from other aspects of life. This is why it is relevant.

Preparing for and responding to emergency and disaster situations within the DeafBlind community requires education and training of DeafBlind individuals utilizing self-efficacy, self-advocacy, and self-preservation to save lives, bring about awareness within the DeafBlind community, mitigate damages and costs. The Emergency Preparedness Fire Safety will engage and educate the audience about the following key concepts that will ultimately lead to Self-Efficacy, Self-Advocacy, & Self-Preservation. Fire Emergencies that happen in the home. What are the Kitchen Fire statistics? Fire and smoke detectors and Kitchen Safety. Developing a safer community for DeafBlind. The presentation will further introduce the following preventative measures, tools, and techniques that the DeafBlind Individual and their families can enact for prevention and survival during a fire in the home. Fire and Smoke Detector types and how to maintain. Kitchen safety Do's and Don’ts. Best Practices & Fire Prevention tools. What to do if there is a Gas Leak. Carbon monoxide safety. Generator safety. In conclusion, Emergency Preparedness Fire Safety, provides more in-depth information and education about Fire Safety in the home to prepare, plan and maintain safety methods which enable the DeafBlind person with their families to be self-reliant with tools and preparation, to be best prepared for prevention and survival during a fire emergency. To instill and educate the audience of; self-efficacy, self-advocacy, and self-preservation of a person's ability to meet the challenges of emergency and disaster situations, to save themselves and family members.

The purpose of this presentation is to describe the role of touch in supporting the development of O&M skills. Little is understood about the ways that touch-based sensory information and communication are used by people who are Deafblind to support the acquisition of orientation and mobility (O&M) skills. O&M researchers have often excluded people who are deafblind and focused on individuals with intact hearing. This qualitative instrumental case study  describes the lived experiences of participants in using their senses of touch for mobility or for teaching mobility. Adults who are DB and O&M Specialists were purposively recruited through agencies, and consumer leadership organizations to participate in screening surveys and in online focus groups. Thirteen (13) geographically, linguistically and racially diverse DeafBlind adults, ages 20 to 76, participated in focus groups. Twenty (20) geographically and linguistically diverse O&M Specialists participated in focus groups. Themes from separate focus groups with DB adults and O&M Specialists were triangulated across investigators and data sources. Participants across both groups described touch as a sense for building spatial concepts and confirming the traveler's relationship to landmarks. Both groups independently expressed that many O&Ms are not well-prepared to support people who are DB to use the touch sense and that touch supports effective communication between the DB traveler and O&M Specialist on lessons. Both groups shared ideas of ways to adapt techniques and materials that integrate the use of touch for increased safety, efficiency and confidence.

A project in Germany, funded by the Aktion Mensch Foundation for five years, is aiming to develop new and specialized vocational training and rehabilitation services that support individuals living with deafblindness in getting or staying in work. Three organizations cooperate with this project. We started with a needs analysis and developed a training program for professionals within the organizations imparting the specifics of deafblindness as a distinct disability. The aimed services are elaborated conceptually, and the concepts are then tested in practice for improvement. The developed services should be implemented into the German social system afterward. The needs analysis shows that a holistic assessment is central to a successful rehabilitation process and that there is a need for support during job searching. Rehabilitation professionals need to master different communication forms to ensure communication for all clients. In Germany, there probably is an average of 30 students with deafblindness graduating from school each year. Counseling services reported 273 persons with deafblindness looking for work-related services in 2020. Individuals living with deafblindness highlighted the importance of getting in touch with peers as well as raising awareness among employers and colleagues. They also called for individualized and recurring services and psychosocial support.  Besides the results of the needs analysis, we will present the elaborated concept of the basic vocational rehabilitation program and our experiences of pilot testing this service (piloting starts in 2023).