Functional Vision Assessment in Iranian Children With Visual Impairment: A Policy Brief

In Iran, standardized and performance-based tools for assessing functional vision in children with visual impairments are either not widely available or not routinely implemented.Existing assessment methods are mostly self-reported or designed for specific linguistic or age groups, limiting their capacity to accurately identify educational and rehabilitation needs.The absence of a shared and unified assessment language among occupational therapists, optometrists, special schools, and parents leads to wide discrepancies in evaluation, resource allocation, and intervention designweakening data-driven decision-making mechanisms.An opportunity for improvement emerges through a performance-based functional vision assessment tool aligned with the fourth edition of the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF-4).This tool enables observation of a child's real-life functional performance, facilitates inter-center comparisons, and supports the development of targeted interventions and educational equity.The instrument comprises 32 items across five domainsactivities of daily living, instrumental activities, education, play/leisure, and social participationand is available in two versions for age groups 3-7 and 7-10 years.