ACBO Connect Conference 2025 – Vision Beyond Sight

ACBO Connect Conference 2025 - Vision Beyond Sight

Date: 27/06/2025 (AEST)

Venue: International Convention Centre, 14 Darling Drive, NSW, 2000

Provider: ACBO

Contact: Sarah Edwards, [E] info@acbo.org.au, [P] 03 9614 3400

Activity Outline

Annual ACBO Connect Conference 2025 -Vision Beyond Sight.

The conference will be held in Sydney on the 27th and 28th June 2025 and will be co-located with ODMAFair25 at the ICC in Sydney – giving attendees access to two “must-attend” events under one roof. We cannot wait to welcome you ACBO Connect 2025!

Keynote speaker is Dr Jen Simonson, OD, FOVDR, FAAO

This conference is an opportunity for members to:
Connect models of visual development with vision therapy practice
Connect your practice as a team, empowering the therapist and frontline team to build exceptional patient care
Connect with friends and meet colleagues interested in Behavioural Optometry

Friday Topics Covered:
Visual Development
Vertical Phoria and Strabismus
Vertical Phoria and Strabismus workshop
Designing your vision therapy space

Saturday Topics Covered:
Vision Therapy with young children
Vision Beyond Sight
Binocular approach to Amblyopia
Vision Therapy with young children Workshop (including Amblyopia)

Learning Objectives

• Conduct a comprehensive case history for young paediatric patients
• Assess binocularity development using stereopsis testing, prism, Hirschberg, Bruckner, and Krimsky tests
• Evaluate ocular motility and document neuro-muscular conditions that limit eye movement accuracy and ability
• Utilize preferential looking and symbol matching tests to assess visual acuity in non-verbal patients
• Assess ocular health of infants and young children
• Record significant clinical observations of visual function
•  Apply assessment of vertical ocular deviations including techniques to evaluate children
• Explain how to determine the best prism prescription to enable fusion
• Illustrate the best types of fusional targets to use in the therapy room
• Explain the common causes of ocular vertical misalignment
• Recognise the differences in function and assessment between vertical fusion range and vertical suppression zone
• Implement addition of head movement and target movement to vision therapy techniques
• Understand how to program a successful sequence of vision therapy activities for treating vertical deviations
• Remember clinical pearls for treating vertical deviations
• Employ vision therapy techniques to decrease symptoms for patients with vertical phoria or strabismus
• Perform vision therapy techniques to improve fusion skills for patients with vertical strabismus
• Implement designing a vision therapy space considering form and function, and the appropriate investment of time and money
• Recall details of previous successes and mistakes through the process of working with designers and equipment suppliers
• Arrange resources and steps to successfully start or move an established vision training clinic and define the ideal list of equipment and vision therapy supplies for in-office vision therapy
• Explain age-appropriate Optometric Vision Therapy Procedures in the following categories: Visually guided Gross Motor, Eye-hand coordination, Bilaterality, Oculomotor, Accommodation, Binocularity, Visual-Perceptual Processing
• Practice procedures to discover through experience the best ways to explain instructions and communicate with young or developmentally delayed patients.
• Illustrate how to adapt common vision therapy activities to the appropriate level for this age group
• Recognize the signs and symptoms of accommodative, binocular, and oculomotor deficiencies
• Identify challenges experienced due to perception and processing disorders of the visual system
• Recall the possible signs of delays in development of visual perception in relation to early function and learning
• Develop an initial treatment plan based on clinical diagnoses and patient goals
• Understand the levels of sensory fusion: Monocular, Monocular Fixation in a Binocular Field, Binocular, and Binocular
• Use activities in optometric vision therapy to develop each sensory level: Equal vision skills in each eye (accommodation, fixation, pursuit, saccade, perception), Improve monocular fixation when both eyes are open. Awareness of simultaneous perception.
•  Apply techniques to decrease suppression
• Implement activities that create luster
• Explain how to modify monocular activities to allow monocular processing under peripheral binocular conditions for the treatment of amblyopia.
•  Implement vision training strategies for amblyopia to: ·Decrease suppression, Improve fixation stability, Improve accuracy of accommodation, ·Develop depth perception, Improve acuity
• Perform vision training procedures for treating strabismus to: Improve mobility of the turned eye, develop central fixation, Build sensory fusion, Build motor fusion (alignment and vergence), and appreciate stereopsis.
• Demonstrate use of prism in appropriate vision therapy activities for optimal improvement
• Discuss how to modify binocular exercises to emphasize detail processing in an amblyopic eye.

Max CPD hours awarded: 12 (3i)

Session Information