02/20/2026
As occupational therapists, our role is to support participation in meaningful daily activities — and vision plays a critical part in nearly all of them.
Ocular motor skills (how the eyes move and work together) directly impact:
📖 Reading fluency and comprehension
✏️ Written expression and copying
🧠 Attention and task completion
🖥️ Screen-based learning
⚽ Hand-eye coordination
🧩 Visual efficiency during school and work tasks
When these skills are inefficient, students and clients may appear inattentive, fatigued, or avoidant — when in reality, their visual system is working overtime.
🔎 Identifying ocular motor deficits is essential because they can significantly affect occupational performance. As occupational therapists, evaluating visual tracking, saccades, pursuits, convergence, and visual-motor integration is within our scope when it relates to functional participation.
OTs do not diagnose medical eye conditions — but we absolutely assess and treat the functional visual skills that impact daily activities, academics, and independence.
When we address:
• Eye teaming
• Smooth tracking
• Accurate shifting between targets
• Visual endurance
We are directly supporting access to learning and meaningful engagement.
At Eye Can OT, we are passionate about helping clients build strong visual foundations so they can participate confidently and successfully in the tasks that matter most.
Thank you to the American Occupational Therapy Association for hearing our request to establish a neurological remedial vision rehab Community of Practice that differentiates this practice area from low vision and promotes the collaboration with the field of Optometry. This is a win for both professions and we can't wait to get this started.
Stay tuned for the launch of this program and a big Thank You to Yvette, Alicia's Capstone student, for moving this forward with your research!