Post-pandemic innovation: a six-session visual telerehabilitation program for children

Abstract

[EN] The Covid-19 pandemic has led orthoptics to the practice of telematic rehabilitation with visually impaired children (VI). Previous research, on protocols developed during the peak of pandemic emergency, highlighted the importance of keeping similar characteristics of the traditional rehabilitation setting in the telematic one. While the world is moving forward from the pandemic, a new awareness about the importance of ICTs in healthcare has spread. Thus, visual telerehabilitation should be improved into a stand-alone method. This paper presents a six-session visual telerehabilitation program with age-specific exercises, developed via Microsoft PowerPoint, training visual attention, visual-spatial motor coordination, visual pursuit, saccadic eye movement, visual search, eye-hand coordination. The sessions are provided via Microsoft Teams where the orthoptist and the child are engaged in a video call (via tablets and personal computers) with the screen-sharing option. Moreover, two tools to monitor the effectiveness of this protocol are presented and discussed: (i) ergo-perimetric evaluation; (ii) ecological evaluation provided by parents.