Understanding People Living with Dementia and Vision Loss

Catherine Tedder, registered nurse, dementia trainer, and coach, shares information and strategies to work with individuals with dementia. Reduced visual fields and misperceptions of visual images may cause fear and difficult behaviors in individuals who have dementia. This course, based on Teepa Snow’s work with dementia patients,  provides information about dementia, the stages of dementia,  and suggests strategies for interacting with individuals who have dementia and vision loss.

This course is available for ACVREP and NBPCB credit ONLY.

Course Objectives:

1. Learn what dementia is. 
2. Understand different types of dementia. 
3. Understand the GEMS states, which is a way to identify where people are on their dementia journey. 
4. Understand brain changes and some vision changes. 
5. Understand the three responses to dementia, 
6. Learn to demonstrate some techniques for working with those with vision loss and dementia. 

The following are recommended screen reader and browser combinations.

Mac: Voiceover with the latest version of Safari,

PC: JAWS or NVDA with Firefox.

The course shows a start date, but this is simply the date the course was made available to the public. They are self-paced. So, there is not an end date. You can enroll at any time.

This course was developed by the National Research & Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision (NRTC) at Mississippi State University. We are the only national center funded to conduct research related to employment for people with blindness or low vision, and training and technical assistance for the federal Older Individuals who are Blind program. As a national center of excellence, we offer resources on a variety of topics for service providers, businesses, and persons with vision loss on our websites: