Why the VPA™
Most vision training tells you vision matters. The VPA™ gives you the instrument to measure it.
Built for school-based and pediatric occupational therapists who need defensible visual performance data in an evaluation report — not another course that ends at awareness.
The gap
There is plenty of vision education. There is very little vision measurement inside OT scope.
Awareness courses
You leave knowing vision matters.
Excellent for building conviction. But when the IEP team asks what you measured, there is nothing to put in the report.
Screening checklists
You leave with a hunch.
Symptom checklists surface concern. They do not tell you which skill broke down, at what level, or what to target first.
The VPA™
You leave with data.
Leveled, repeatable, criterion-referenced performance across 15 skills — with a printable report, an intervention plan, and a retest baseline.
What makes it different
A leveled instrument, not a longer checklist.
The Five-Level Framework
Every skill is probed from Level 1 (foundational) through Level 5 (functional integration). You don't get pass/fail — you get the level where performance breaks down, which is the level you treat at.
15 skills across 5 domains
Visual acuity and contrast, oculomotor efficiency, visual perceptual processing, visual-motor integration, and functional integration in reading and writing.
Reading and writing are measured, not assumed
Level 5 uses grade-level reading passages and generative writing samples, because handwriting is the referral that brings most of these students to you.
Flags map straight to intervention
A flagged level pulls the matching UDL supports, activity worksheets, and 12-week treatment templates — no separate hunt for what to do Monday.
Age-banded, 5–7 through 17+
Stimuli, instructions, and difficulty are written per age band, with a separate Pre-K Quick Screen for ages 3–4. Nothing is a shrunk-down adult task.
Worksheets that match the screen
Printable stimuli are sized to real working distances — 60 cm intermediate, 40 cm near — so what you print is what you scored.
Built inside OT scope
Client factors and occupational performance — nothing borrowed from another profession.
The VPA™ measures how visual performance skills support or limit participation in reading, writing, and classroom occupations. It does not diagnose refractive error, binocular disorders, or ocular disease. Where findings suggest those, the report generates a referral trigger and names the appropriate provider.
Evidence and development
- Each of the 15 skills carries a published evidence anchor and a stated school-performance impact.
- Administration fidelity, scoring rules, and referral criteria are documented in the technical manual.
- Accommodation guidance is grounded in Universal Design for Learning principles from the developer's doctoral work.
- Criterion-referenced today; scaled scores release per age-band cell as the normative sample reaches n ≥ 30, with sample size disclosed on every report.
The workflow
From flag to plan in one afternoon.
01
Fast Screener
5 minutes · free
Flag whether a visual performance concern is worth a closer look.
Run the free screener02
Mini VPA™
~15 minutes
Five probes, one per level, to identify which levels need full measurement.
See the Mini03
Full VPA™
~45–60 minutes
All 15 skills across 5 domains, with manual entry for MVPT-4, Beery VMI, TVPS-4, and DEM scores you already have.
See the Full VPA™04
Plan and support
Same session
Treatment templates with LTGs and STOs, UDL classroom supports, and matched activity worksheets.
See treatment templatesHonest fit
Who this is for — and who it isn't.
A strong fit if you are
- School-based OTs writing evaluation and re-evaluation reports
- Pediatric OTs whose handwriting referrals keep surfacing visual issues
- OTs building a vision caseload who need defensible documentation
- University faculty and fieldwork educators teaching visual performance
Not the right tool for
- Anyone looking for a refractive, binocular, or ocular-health diagnosis — that is optometry's scope, and the VPA™ refers out
- Clinicians wanting a norm-referenced standard score today — the VPA™ is criterion-referenced while the normative sample builds
- A replacement for the MVPT-4, Beery VMI, TVPS-4, or DEM — it organizes and extends what those tell you
The training layer sits on top of the tool.
Two AOTA-approved continuing education courses teach the Five-Level Framework and VPA™ administration and clinical reasoning — so the instrument is used with fidelity, not improvised.
Start with a student you're already worried about.
The Fast Screener is free and takes five minutes. If it flags, the Mini VPA™ tells you which levels to measure in full.