This session explores how visual processing differences affect navigation, safety, and regulation and why these are frequently misunderstood. It examines lighting, movement, visual clutter, and environmental demands, alongside the impact on comfort, focus, and wellbeing.

Although this session focuses mainly on autism, visual processing differences can also apply to some ADHD, dyslexic, and dyspraxic people as well as those with learning disabilities.

By completing this session, participants will demonstrate that they can:

• Understand how visual processing differences affect daily life experiences.
• Identify environmental factors that increase visual demand.
• Understand links between visual input and regulation.
• Connect visual processing differences to difficulties with movement and navigation.
• Apply practical visual support strategies effectively.

The participant will be able to:

• Define visual sensory processing differences and explain how sight influences learning, communication, and regulation.

• Identify signs of visual over- and under-sensitivity, including difficulties with light, contrast, movement, and visual clutter.

• Apply practical, sensory-informed strategies to reduce visual stress and support engagement across home, education, healthcare, and community settings.

• Introduction

1. 1. • 2 minutes (Welcome)

• Trainer Background

1. 1. • 2 minutes (trainer profile and personal experience with sight sensitivity, professional credentials)

• Course Overview & Sensory Processing Basics

1. 1. • 3 minutes (course structure, oversensitivity vs undersensitivity explained, how the brain filters sensory information)

• Understanding Sight Differences

1. 1. • 3 minutes (Brightness, depth, color, contrast, movement, lighting, shadows; peripheral vision and filtering challenges)

• Body Language & Visual Processing

1. 1. • 2 minutes (How sight processing connects to facial expressions, gestures, and non-verbal cues)

• Oversensitivity to Sight

1. 1. • 4 minutes (and how this effects colors, pattern recognition and visual details)

• Visual Experience Examples

1. 1. • 6 minutes (demonstrations of light sensitivity, transition challenges from bright to dark spaces, afterburn effects)

• Light Levels & Transitions

1. 1. • 2 minutes (Lux measurements, room-to-room transitions, importance of lighting types, neurodivergent household lighting preferences)

• Undersensitivity to Sight

1. 1. • 1 minute (Need for extra stimulation, difficulty tracking movement, and recognizing faces)

• School & Environmental Challenges

1. 1. • 2 minutes (what effect the environment can have)

• Practical Activity & Solutions

1. 1. • 5 minutes (Sleep environment, outdoors, public transport, school/work, communication strategies)

• Sensory Diet Planning

1. 1. • 2 minutes (Two types: list-based and timetable-based; examples of proactive sensory scheduling)

• Site Sensory Audit

1. 1. • 1 minute (Environmental checklists for spaces to adapt environments)

• Summary & Next Steps

• 1 minute (resources, upcoming session, contact information)

TOTAL: 36 minutes.