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VI Registration

The VI Registration includes all students who receive services from your district as a student with visual impairments. This count includes students under the age of 3 served by your district and ECI, students who are deafblind, as well as those with visual impairment and additional disabilities.

Annual Registration of Students with Visual Impairments

​The VI Registration should include all students who receive any services from your district as a student with visual impairments. This count includes students under the age of 3 years who are served by your district and ECI, students who are deafblind, as well as those with visual impairment and additional disabilities.

The registration also includes students who are receiving accommodations for a visual impairment under Section 504. There is a separate password for those entering the information about these students. Since TEA does not maintain a list of individuals responsible for Section 504, we are asking you to share the 504 password with the person in your district responsible for 504 programs.

The VI Registration generates State Supplemental Visually Impaired funds for each ESC Region, federal funds to obtain educational materials from the American Printing House for the Blind, and data for regional and statewide program planning. This registration is also used by TEA to verify the need for large print and braille textbooks.

The data needed should reflect the number of students with a visual impairment who were in the school district as of January 2, 2023, or the first day the district resumed following the winter holiday. The deadline to complete registration is January 31, 2023.

Please note the following regarding deafblind students:

  • Every student who is considered deafblind (or has IDEA eligibility for both D/HH and VI) on the VI Registration should be included on the Deafblind Child Count.
  • Every student who is included on the Deafblind Child Count should also be included on the Registration of Students in Texas with Visual Impairments.
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Update:

DBCC users no longer need to add or drop students or do any data entry for basic student information, but they do need to continue to review their list of students for completeness and should review basic student information for correctness. If any issues are discovered they should be addressed by the person who does VIR SPED entry for the district.

DBCC entry cannot be closed for a district until VIR SPED entry has been closed for that district.

VIR SPED users should be aware that DBCC users will not be able to do data entry for any students new to their district until they have been added to their district’s VIR SPED data.

Users doing VIR 504 entry should not be affected by any of the changes described above, since section 504 students should not qualify as deafblind.

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Superintendent Signature

  • The Superintendent signatures will be collected electronically.
  • At the end of the registration period, they will be notified by email that their page is open and given a password to access their district data.
  • Once notified, they will have until February 15, 2023 to certify their district’s information. No paperwork will need to be submitted.

Important Reminders

  • Students must have their TSDS unique identification number entered. Since 2015, the TSDS Unique ID has been the identification of record. Children birth to three years old may still use the last 4 digits of their social security number if there is no State of Texas identification.
  • Under Section 504, the District 504 Coordinator is responsible for identifying students with visual impairment. It is not the responsibility of the TVI, since they are not providing services to these students.
  • The Superintendent signatures will be collected electronically. At the end of the registration period, they will be notified by email that their page is open and given a password to access their district data. Once notified, they will have a two-week window to click on a box certifying their district’s information. No paperwork will need to be submitted.
  • We are again requesting visual acuity details. They are useful for other state agencies and planning. We will continue to use MDB (meets the definition of blindness), FDB (functions at the definition of blindness) or NLB (not legally blind.) These are the terms that the American Printing House for the Blind has established for determining entitlements for Federal Quota funds. Complete definitions for these terms are in the Glossary.
  • Reading media requires a grade level. There is a dropdown for the media used and the grade level media used.

Consent for release of Confidential Information

Each student who is registered as a student in Texas with a visual impairment, a student who is deafblind, or a student with a visual impairment under Section 504 must have consent for sharing that information with other agencies. The consent form allows us to share their information for funding and resources available from the American Printing House for the Blind, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), Blind Children’s Program; HHSC Early  Intervention program; Texas Workforce Commission; regional Education Service Centers; and other agencies. It is important that the Consent for Release of Confidential Information form is signed annually and maintained in the student folder. (English Version, Spanish Version, and Vietnamese Version)