Foundation for Blind Children

Foundation for Blind Children's school-based program serves students from pre-k to 4th grade, teaching skills aligned with the expanded core curriculum. This enables students with visual impairments to access the same curriculum as their sighted peers. Our ability-based classrooms include related services like physical, occupational, and speech therapy.

Foundation for Blind Children's media center manufactures and distributes braille, large-print and e-text versions of textbooks and classroom worksheets nationwide. Serving over 1,000 registered users, fbc's media center is the largest alternative format provider in the state of Arizona.

Foundation for Blind Children's itinerant vision teachers travel throughout maricopa county and the navajo nation in northern Arizona, providing support to students in various settings, including public, charter, and private schools. They teach compensatory skills like braille, assistive technology, and orientation and mobility, promoting independence and social interaction. Sharp (sports, habilitation, arts, and recreation program) is also a support for our students in the k-middle school setting. Sharp programming provides opportunities for students to meet other peers with visual impairments, learn independence and advocacy skills, experience adaptive recreation activities, and attend field trips around the community. Our sharp program offers additional support for students in grades k-8. Our early intervention program provides resources, support, and guidance to families with Children under three who have visual impairments. We offer weekly parent meet-ups, educational workshops, emotional support, and social events. Our family education and support program empowers families to support their child's development.

Foundation for Blind Children's adult services program provides rehabilitation and training for individuals with visual impairments, ages 14 and up, who are registered with Arizona vocational rehabilitation. We support teens transitioning to work or college and adults seeking to re-enter the workforce. Our goal is to help individuals with visual impairments achieve employment. The new horizons program supports retirees experiencing vision loss, offering support groups, independent living skills, and orientation and mobility training. The southwest center for assistive technology training (catt sw) is a collaboration between the american printing house for the Blind (aph) and the Alabama institute for deaf and Blind, Washington state school for the Blind, and Foundation for Blind Children. Catt provides assistive technology training to teachers of the visually impaired, utilizing a "train the trainer" model on specific aph assistive technology. We support Arizona, California, new mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada. Foundation for Blind Children offers services at a low vision clinic which maximizes the remaining vision of a visually impaired person. Foundation for Blind Children contracts with a highly trained, highly specialized optometrist to conduct thorough examinations of our patients, ranging in various age, and recommends magnification devices necessary to access information and live independent lives. Foundation for Blind Children's new research team publishes content to inform and improve the field, while our partnership with Arizona state university's tvi program provides expert instruction to future teachers and hosts student teaching and clinical experiences.