Vision Problems in Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Problems in visual functioning are one of the most common additional problems in children with intellectual disabilities. Nevertheless, they often remain undetected in children with intellectual disabilities, yet they affect development and learning. Therefore, to examine the prevalence and the kind of visual problems in children with intellectual disability we tested visual functions (visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, stereoacuity, oculomotor functions) in 25 children. All children had mild to moderate intellectual disabilities, and were between 7 and 13 years old. They all attended schools for children with intellectual disabilities. Results show that visual functions in most children were less developed than expected for their age, especially stereovision. Almost half of them had uncorrected refractive errors. We found some degree of low vision in seven children, according to results