Austin Assessment Work vs Feather squadron 2

The Austin Assessment is a fun, simple card-matching game that screens children for cerebral visual impairment (CVI). It works by comparing children’s performance to the normative range for their age group. It has been validated on over 900 children. Who can use it? The Austin Assessment for Professionals allows teachers, therapists, researchers and clinicians to: • easily screen children for CVI-related visual issues • email or print results • log in to the online dashboard to view and search data • download data as .csv file if needed for statistical analysis. If you’re a parent or caregiver who wants to screen your child, we recommend our other app, the Austin Assessment. The Austin Assessment is a screening tool, not a diagnostic tool. It can identify if there is a possibility a child has CVI, but you’ll need a diagnosis from a medical professional to confirm this. Who can I screen? The Austin Assessment has been validated on children from three age groups: • 5 to 8 years • 9 to 12 years • 13 to 18 years. We’re working to validate it on adults and younger children. To complete a screening, the child needs to be able to: • understand the goal of the game • recognise individual cards • use their finger to drag cards. This means children with some types of cognitive, visual or motor difficulties may not be able to complete a screening. How does the app work? There is a multi-coloured version of the game and a single-coloured version. Children need to complete both to finish the assessment. Both versions start at a basic level and increase in complexity. The way a child with CVI-related visual issues looks at things is different from the way a child with typical vision does. The Austin Assessment identifies these differences. They include: • darting eye movements • taking longer to match the cards as more cards are added • becoming less accurate as more cards are added • slower response times to visual stimuli. These differences can also be found in other conditions. While a positive result from the Austin Assessment indicates the child may have visual issues due to CVI, a medical assessment is needed to confirm the diagnosis. Your results After completing a screening, you’ll be able to download, email or print a report that summarises the child’s results and whether CVI has been identified as a possibility. You can also access the screening results via the online dashboard, which allows you to search and download data in .csv format. Data privacy and storage The data from your screenings is held securely and meets health and medical data storage privacy laws and requirements. We may use anonymised data from your screenings to improve the Austin Assessment and help with CVI research. We collect the following information from your participants: • age at time of assessment • known conditions (if provided) • assessment data including eye movement data, accuracy and time taken We do not collect any personal identifying information, biometrics or face data. However, anonymised data may be shared with third parties for research purposes. You may withdraw your consent at any time by deleting your account using the feature provided in the app. Origins of the Austin Assessment The Austin Assessment was developed by Dr Nicola McDowell, who established the Austin McDowell Foundation to provide education and support for those affected by brain-based visual issues. The foundation is a not-for-profit that aims to help improve quality of life for people with CVI through research and by providing access to simple and effective screening tools. The development of the Austin Assessment app is backed by peer reviewed published research findings, focused on identifying and understanding CVI. The Austin Assessment can be used in research, as long as the assessments are carried out correctly, in line with the terms and conditions, found on our website.

This app contains a variety of fun games for children to play (ages 5 and up) and we measure their listening abilities while they play! This app has a quick screening option for parents and teachers, and a comprehensive testing option for appropriate professionals only. This version has been localised for US English. Please see other versions for other countries/accents. For Teachers and Parents: If you think that your child has listening, language or learning problems that might be related to auditory processing, you can use our quick screening to find out if there are any concerns. If you are concerned, regardless of the screening results, we recommend you visit your local audiologist or speech-language pathologist and recommend this app to get your child's auditory processing abilities tested thoroughly as well as traditional hearing testing performed. This app contains a variety of fun games for children to play (ages 5 and up) and we measure their listening abilities while they play! Your specialist can then recommend the appropriate action including treatments and strengthening exercises based on these results. For the professional: Researchers for years have shown the importance of auditory processing abilities and their correlations to language, reading, and educational abilities. Professionals (audiologists, speech-language pathologists, educational psychologists, paediatricians, etc) have not been able to measure auditory processing abilities routinely. There are a variety of reasons given for this; time-constraints, cost-constraints, limited knowledge on how to administer, limited knowledge on how to interpret the findings. Now, the team at Acoustic Pioneer have created a fast, fun, and easy way to measure multiple areas of auditory processing using an iPad app! The assessment app has been developed and normed on over 1000 children. The results are analysed immediately and you will receive a report on the results for your client comparing their ability to that of same-aged peers and will come with recommendations including therapy options, suggestions for teachers, compensatory strategy suggestions, or other information that would be helpful.