Assessment and educational implications of albinism.

Forty-seven visually impaired albino schoolchildren were identified from the Victorian school population. 28 (aged 7-18) who had had a standard ophthalmic examination including the LH5 Visual Acuity Test for Contrast Sensitivity agreed to try a battery of educational tests in addition. The tests were the Non-Verbal Ability Test, Visual Motor Integration Test, Torch Reading, reading miscue analysis and reading of test to measure sustained near visual acuity. The most useful of these was the Non-Verbal Ability Test (NAT) which indicated that this group of albinos was of above average cognitive ability. This was independent of the findings on ophthalmic examination. The NAT is also useful in identifying relative strengths and weaknesses in information processing abilities in albino subjects.