Our Programs:
Home Management & Independent Living Skills

Navigating the Physical World

VisionLink’s Home Management & Independent Living Skills classes are designed to develop and strengthen your abilities to navigate, communicate, and engage more fully in everyday life with the goal of maximizing your safety and enjoyment. Our sequence of courses helps you build knowledge and confidence as you progress at your own pace, proceeding from one level to the next. Each class focuses on specific goals and skill sets. You will learn from our instructors and volunteers as well as your peers.

Instructors with first-hand experience

Several of our instructors teach from their own experience of adapting to blindness and low vision. They bring this knowledge into the classes they lead, whether in adapting how you access technology, refining your practical skills, or building a peer support network.

Orientation & Mobility Training (O&M)

These classes help you gain the sense of freedom that traveling with a white cane can provide. O&M classes provide one-on-one instruction with skilled trainers as well as exercises with peers, building skills and techniques you can use at home, out in the community, or at work. You will learn ways to increase awareness of your surroundings, which provide the cues and information you need when you are on-the-go. You will also learn how to navigate the regional public transportation system so you can travel where and when you want.

“VisionLink provides some of the best mobility instruction I’ve ever had. The trainers helped me learn to use my ears to navigate the city, go with the flow of the traffic, and cross the streets with confidence.”

Home Management & Independent Living Classes

VisionLink offers courses that are intentionally sequenced to progress from one level to the next. Each course is goal-oriented and focused on building concrete skills. You can advance at your own pace upon achieving proficiency in a particular set of skills. Using a combination of classroom-based instruction, participatory workshops and one-on-one tutorials, VisionLink works with you to master hard and soft skills of daily living and provides you with the opportunity to practice the skills.

Using non-visual techniques, you will learn to develop home and personal management skills to adapt to your own lives:

• prepare meals for yourself, family, and friends in a safe and efficient manner
• clean and care for your home
• identify items in the refrigerator, pantry, and closets
• create household organization methods
• manage time and calendar
• identify currency
• budget
• wash and care for clothing
• identify medication
• and more

Please note: Currently, VisionLink is offering online versions of its core training programs while home management workshops, determined to be best offered in-person, are currently on hold.