Falls are the leading cause of injury among older adults. Having vision loss puts an individual at higher risk for falls. In this course, an interdisciplinary team from Vision Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a non-profit agency in New York, bring focus to this important topic. Learn how to identify individuals at risk for falls, learn about home safety checklist, and modifications and strategies to help prevent falls. This course was written by William Hixson, Travis Joseph, Teddy Kern, and Julie Spodnick.

This course is available for 1-hour CRC, ACVREP, and NBPCB credit.

Course Objectives:

1. Identify participants who are a fall risk,
2. Recognize how vision loss impacts falls,
3. Describe the four common eye conditions for older adults,
4. Describe assistive devices,
5. Discuss home safety checklists and modifications for individuals who are visually impaired,
6. Increase awareness of evidence-based programs,
7. Identify when and from whom to obtain help, and
8. Identify interventions for visual impairments.

The following are recommended screen reader and browser combinations.

Mac: Voiceover with the latest version of Safari,

PC: JAWS or NVDA with Firefox.

Note that currently, course quizzes are not functioning properly for Microsoft screen reader users with Chrome or Edge.

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:

For daily content relevant to the field of blindness and low vision, connect with us on social media: