Abstract
CVI is now the commonest cause of bilateral visual functional loss in children with a visual impairment and the prevalence is increasing worldwide. CVI is a brain-based condition resulting usually from adverse events at or around birth and sometimes because of late-acquired cerebral injury. It manifests as a spectrum of higher visual function deficits (HVFDs) affecting visual function in everyday life in the absence of visible eye pathology and often in the presence of normal visual acuity, which usually negates further assessment and investigations. HVFDs manifest as difficulties with visually guided behavior, such navigation, often within a cluttered and crowded environment; route finding; inaccurate reaching for objects and perceptual difficulties, such as relative motion perception, recognizing faces, and reading difficulties. Underlying these challenges is an altered cerebral visual processing network and oculomotor anomalies, yet to be understood fully. A lack of specific assessment tools has made it difficult to map the spectrum and severity of this complex, multi-dimensional condition. Consequently, designing (re)habilitative measures has been challenging. We will describe our collaborative CVI research programme. The development of the HVFQI App – an interactive web-based Higher Visual Function assessment tool and its application to our research study. We will present our study, data, analysis, and results. We will discuss the relevance of our work for CVI and the future direction of this research programme. We hope to engender discussion and feedback on our ongoing work.