Need help getting gift ideas for a child? We’re launching out 2023 Holiday Gift Giving Guide where we will be sharing some tips and tricks on how to adapt and create toys for children who are blind or visually impaired this holiday season! This series is here to help inspire and inform friends and families on both how to adapt toys and to become more aware of what gifts may be the best for children with visual impairments.

You can also view our series on Facebook.

Puzzles make a great gift for all ages but are often full of visual clutter. Therefore, it can be hard to recognize where the puzzle pieces go. Here’s how you can adapt a puzzle to make it easier for kids with visual impairments to know where the pieces go and have a good time!

Simply take all the pieces out of the puzzle and paint the boundary of the 3D background with black paint, leaving the interior hole a bright color, such as red or yellow.

Books are a great way to encourage literacy in your children. But it can be even better if you bring a book to life using tactiles!

Take a look at the book you’d like to get a child. What opportunities are there in the story for your child to explore a texture? If you’re reading Rainbow Fish, you might try to hot glue sequence fabric to mimic fish scales and provide a shiny object for light to reflect off of. If you’re reading Pete the Cat, we recommend finding fur fabric instead. Let your creativity shine!

Sensory Bins are an important part of a child's fine motor skill development and sensory exploration—and they make great gifts! Whether you’re wanting to gift sensory bin materials, such as scoops, kinetic sand or light up toys, or keep it simple and give a gift card to an art supply store, there’s no wrong way to make it!

One of our favorites is a water tank. Fill a plastic tub with water and place glowing floaty toys inside it to let your child explore.

Sometimes, the best gifts are ones made with love! In fact, some can be made right in your living room! We recommend gifting a ‘little room’. This resembles a fort for a child but is customized for a child with a visual impairment, particularly those with limited mobility. At CCVI, we create a 3ft x 2ft x 2ft box with an open front wall out of PVC pipe and covering the other walls with a black blanket.

Inside the room, place LED light strips or glowing toys on the ceiling that can attract children with light sensitivity. It’s a great gift to purchase or give materials and gadgets anyone can buy that work well for your own little room at home!

It’s important to give children with visual impairments independence to help grow their confidence and motor skills! One great way to adapt your favorite books is to glue popsicle sticks on each page making it easier to turn the pages.

This is a great way to encourage children to read on their own.

Whether you’re looking for the best types of toys to give a child with a visual impairment or wanting to know how to make some toys more accessible, a switch is perfect!

Battery interrupters and jellybean switches are a great way to give your child accessibility for some adaptive play! A switch is a device used to adapt traditional powered toys that move, dance, or light up. This makes it much easier for children with limited mobility to use them. You can purchase them on Amazon or other places online.