Development
Learn how to support your baby as they grow and develop through milestones, including gross motor and fine motor development as well as communication skills.
Filter by: Communication, Crawling, Fine and Gross Motor, Orientation and Mobility
Orientation and Mobility
ZipZac Mobility Chairs
The ZipZac 1 & 2® are great mobility chairs for kids who need assistance. The chair was originally developed for a young boy with spina bifida who could move his...
Orientation and Mobility, Visual Impairment
Hand Use While Walking: Helping Your Child Who is Blind Understand His Home
Certified Orientation and Mobility instructor Susan Shier Lowry gives tips on how to encourage young blind children to reach out and touch while walking through familiar environments. Trailing techniques are...
Orientation and Mobility, Visual Impairment
Anticipators for Young Children with Visual Impairments: Push Toys, Pre-Canes and Long Canes
Early Orientation and Mobility skills for blind children can be taught with pre-canes or push toys. Learn how to choose the best tools and when to introduce them.
Fine and Gross Motor, Sensory Activities
Hold Everything: “Stay-Put” Play Spaces for Infants and Young Children with Sensory Impairments and Other Special Needs
This guide provides you with DIY Stay-Put play spaces for infants and developmentally young children with sensory impairments and other special needs.
Assistive Technology, Orientation and Mobility
Smart Cane Recognizes Faces
The XploR cane uses smartphone technology to send vibrations to the user when it detects a familiar face.
Feeding and Eating, Fine and Gross Motor, Product Reviews
EazyHold: Grip Assist Strap
EazyHold is a simple grip assist strap that easily attaches to objects enabling kids with limited grip strength to accomplish daily living skills.
Fine and Gross Motor
Headpod keeps your head up!
Headpod keeps your head up! Revolutionary dynamic patented head support system for inadequate head control due to hypotonia of the neck muscles.
Orientation and Mobility
Learning to Navigate through Echolocation
Daniel Kish demonstrates his controversial echolocation technique that allows those who are blind to navigate using sonar in this TedX talk.
Communication
The ProxTalker Communication Board with Real Objects
The ProxTalker is a communications device that gives nonverbal kids a voice. Tags can be customized for your child's specific situation, and added and revised as necessary.
Communication
Sign to Speech to Text – The Next Big Thing for the Deaf Community
New technology translates sign language to speech and speech into text, making communication between those who sign and those who don't much more seamless.
Orientation and Mobility
These Shoes Were Made for…Giving Directions?
Ducere Tech, an Indian start-up, has created new technology whereby your shoes can tell you which direction to take by connecting wirelessly with your GPS nav system. This could be...
Orientation and Mobility, Visual Impairment
Community Trips for Little Explorers: Teaching your child who is blind about the community
Children with visual impairment learn by having direct, hands-on experiences with objects and events, including those in their community. These experiences can build important concepts that will prepare your child...
Communication, iPad Apps and Accessibility
Talkitt® Makes Unintelligible Speech Understandable
Talkitt translates unintelligible speech from any language into understandable speech through smart phones, tablets or computers. Works for people with speech disorders or diseases or syndromes that affect speech.
Fine and Gross Motor
AFO Socks
A great resource for anyone who uses AFOs, this site sells socks for both children and teens in a variety of colors. Yes, AFO socks in different colors and patterns!
Assistive Technology, Orientation and Mobility
Verizon Creates Navigational Tools to Promote Independence for Blind Users
Being blind means giving up a lot of independence; this new technology from Verizon gives blind people real-time information about their environment, including colors, textures, nav cues, and more, using...
Orientation and Mobility
Go Baby Go Provides Mobility Inspiration!
Dr Cole Galloway from the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Delaware is adapting motorized ride-on toys for children with mobility special needs.
Assistive Technology, Orientation and Mobility, Visual Impairment
Getting Around Using Assistive Technology when You’re Blind
Getting around keeps getting easier for blind travelers thanks to new assisistive technology. Find out about a new O&M iPhone app and an UltraBike!
Fine and Gross Motor
Merry Muscles: A Jumper for Big Kids!
Merry Muscles is a jumper that connects to a door frame or beam in your ceiling. What makes it special is that they carry ALL sizes, from baby up to...
Orientation and Mobility, Visual Impairment
Echolocation for Blind Children
Echolocation is the use of sounds to gain information about the environment and surrounding objects. Blind kids can learn to use echolocation to augment traditional orientation and mobility!
Communication
STACS: Standardized Tactile Augmentative Communication Symbols Kit
Tactile symbol systems are valuable tools that aid learners with conversations about people, places, events, and ideas.
Orientation and Mobility
Little Long Canes
This is a wonderful 18 minute video interview with Joe Cutter, renowned early childhood Orientation and Mobility instructor who pioneered the use of the cane with very young children. He...
Orientation and Mobility
UltraCane
The UltraCane is an electronic cane for visually impaired users that delivers feedback through small vibrating buttons in the handle. Its ultrasound system provides information about obstacles in front of...
Communication
Looking Deeper to Find the Person Within
Lesley Potgieter writes about reaching a child who cannot speak. Our ability to communicate via speech is the way the world accepts and interprets us, but Lesley argues that we...
Development
10 Hands-On Activities to Teach Concept Development
Teach your blind child about the world through direct interaction! This is called "concept development" and through hands-on learning they can learn about textures, sizes, nature... all sorts of things!