TJ is a happy one-year-old with a big personality. He makes new friends every time he meets someone. He was also diagnosed with oculocutaneous albinism. It’s a rare, inherited condition that means his skin, hair, and eyes are all light. It also affects his sight. TJ’s condition is rare – only one person in 20,000…
The twins were blind and couldn’t walk or speak, how could Wayfinder help? Mayra and Pedro’s twin babies, José and María, were born prematurely at only 27 weeks. In their birth country, the medical treatment the twins received left them blind. They wanted so much for their children. But without vision, they wondered, how could…
Meet a vision specialist from our Blind Babies Foundation program How do you bring Wayfinder Family Services’ mission to life? Early language is difficult for children who have visual impairments, motor impairments that keep them from using sign language, or cognitive impairments. In object communication, we give them an object to touch, like a spoon…
A simple song and a little star produced a tremendous breakthrough for Harper, a two-and a half-year-old girl in Wayfinder’s Blind Babies Foundation program. When Harper was a few months old, her parents, Kellie and Jason, began to see clues that something was wrong with their baby. She wasn’t following objects with her eyes or…
“I had wonderful teachers who knew I was going to be successful,” says Caitlin Hernandez, graduate of Wayfinder’s Blind Babies Foundation early intervention program and teacher of children with disabilities. “I want to pay this forward.” Caitlin, now age 29, was born blind. “I have light perception but no functional vision,” she explains. When Caitlin…
“Before Elizabeth was born, I had never met a blind person,” says Gina, Elizabeth’s mother. Back then, Gina and her husband, Greg, wondered, How should we play with Elizabeth? Should we limit her activities? What will her life be like when she grows up? Wayfinder was there with the answers. When Elizabeth was 6 weeks…
Babies Count is a national registry of young children, birth to 36 months of age with visual impairments and Wayfinder’s Blind Babies Foundation program was a founding member. This registry works in conjunction with public and private agencies to collect standardized epidemiological and demographic data regarding children, their visual conditions and the systems created to…
FOCUS Families is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to providing information, education and support to families whose children are affected by rare septo optic dysplasia and/or optic nerve hypoplasia. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the organization distributes current medical literature on the visual disorder ONH; provides information on community resources; conducts annual national conventions in…
Albinism can affect vision in multiple ways. NOAH (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation) has a special “New Parent Program” for families who have recently received an Albinism diagnosis for their child. NOAH’s mission is to act as a conduit for accurate and authoritative information about all aspects of living with albinism and to provide a place where people…
Parents are the most critical members of an early intervention team! PAIVI (Parents and Their Infants with Visual Impairments, 2nd Edition), written by Deborah Chen, Gail Calvello and Clare Taylor Friedman, is an updated version of the original Parents and Visually Impaired Infants (PAVII). This set of materials is designed to help parents and teachers…
