Occupational Therapy
Rediscover independence and confidence with occupational therapy at Katmai Eye & Vision Center—blending vision rehabilitation, functional skills training, and neuro-care for lasting everyday success.
What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapy gives adults and children with vision, cognitive, and fine motor problems proven ways to improve their daily life quality. Research shows that this therapy works well for older adults who face vision challenges along with cognitive and fine motor problems. These patients often struggle more with daily tasks and experience higher rates of depression and anxiety than other elderly people.
Therapy is necessary and successful for congenital or developmental conditions in children. Occupational therapists use special techniques, adaptive equipment, and changes to the environment. These methods help people with impaired vision to move around more safely and comfortably in their surroundings.
Common conditions treated are:
- Handwriting difficulties
- Anxiety with visual tasks
- Visual recognition, memory and processing
- Reach and grab inaccuracies because of impaired depth perception
- Balance and movement difficulties like drifting when walking, stumbling or falling
- Driving difficulties with lane positioning, proper speed maintenance, multitasking, navigation
- Dizziness or nausea
- Visual field loss
What is Vision & Occupational Therapy?
Vision therapy is a specialized treatment program that develops and improves visual skills and abilities, along with the skills to improve everyday life. Eye doctors mainly oversee these sessions that go beyond simple eye exercises to boost brain-eye communication and help the visual system work better. A complete vision and skills therapy program includes tailored exercises done at the clinic through weekly or biweekly, 45 minutes sessions. Patients also practice exercises at home and in some cases can be involved in a hybrid with tele-treatment over a computer.
How Occupational Therapy Supports Visual Function
Occupational therapy helps people with visual and lifestyle impairments through rehabilitation techniques to guide their daily activities. These therapists review how vision problems affect a person’s tasks and adjust environments to reduce limitations.
The therapists teach strategies to work around visual and lifestyle deficits like loss of visual field, depth perception issues, glare sensitivity, and poor contrast perception. Their training focuses on key visual skills such as eccentric viewing (using peripheral vision), visual tracking, eye hand coordination, visual processing tasks, and systematic visual scanning.
Differences Between Vision Therapy and Occupational Therapy
Vision therapy and occupational therapy use different approaches to visual rehabilitation despite some overlap. Vision therapy works on improving eye movements, focusing abilities, eye teaming, peripheral vision processing, and visual-motor skills. Occupational therapy takes a wider view by working on physical, cognitive, psychosocial, developmental, and sensory-perceptual aspects.
The professional training and tools create another key difference. Occupational therapists help people gain or regain abilities through sensory-motor exercises that improve coordination and awareness. Vision therapy specialists can prescribe therapeutic lenses, filters, and prisms that substantially change how someone sees.
These two fields work well together. Eye doctors identify and treat vision problems that affect daily tasks, while occupational therapists help patients participate in meaningful activities. This team approach often creates the best results for patients with visual impairments that are either developmental, traumatic or acquired brain injuries such as a stroke.
Vision therapy and occupational therapy offers evidence-based solutions for the 12 million Americans with vision impairments, helping them regain independence and improve quality of life through specialized interventions.
- Occupational therapists teach compensatory strategies like eccentric viewing and visual scanning to help patients maximize remaining vision and navigate daily activities safely.
- Collaborative care between occupational therapists and optometrists delivers optimal outcomes—OTs focus on functional daily tasks while optometrists address specific visual skills.
- Environmental modifications, adaptive equipment, and assistive technology significantly enhance independence for people with low vision in their homes and workplaces.
- Research shows 47% of patients receiving vision rehabilitation achieve clinically important improvements within 6-9 months of structured, goal-directed therapy.
- Assessment goes beyond basic vision testing to evaluate how visual deficits impact real-world activities like cooking, reading, and medication management.
Occupational therapists including vision therapy in their treatments are supporting multicomponent approaches that address both visual limitations and their functional impact on meaningful daily activities.
Make your appointment today with either Dr. Sheryl Lentfer or Dr. Laura Sifferman.