Comparison of the Reading Performance of Turkish-Speaking Students with Visual Impairments and Sighted Students in Terms of Reading Components

This study compared the reading performance of braille-reading students with visual impairments (VI) and their sighted peers enrolled in Grades 2, 3, and 4 across five reading components: phonological awareness, decoding, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. A causal-comparative research design was employed. The participants were 32 students with VI and 32 sighted students (N = 64), individually matched by grade and maternal education. Data were collected using the Informal Reading Inventory, Word Reading Knowledge Test, Phonological Awareness Assessment Procedures, Multidimensional Fluency Scale, and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Revised. Group differences were analysed using the Mann–Whitney U test. Students with VI scored significantly lower in decoding and reading speed across all grade levels and in prosodic reading in Grades 2 and 4; the Grade 3 difference in prosodic reading was not significant. No group differences were found in phonological awareness or vocabulary knowledge. Reading comprehension did not differ in Grades 2 and 3, but students with VI scored significantly higher in Grade 4. These findings suggest that differences in reading performance are more strongly associated with the perceptual and cognitive demands of braille reading than with phonological awareness or vocabulary knowledge.