Experience is not uniform: two students with the same clinical diagnosis may need very different support, depending on when the impairment developed, how much residual vision remains, and what tools they have already learned to use confidently.
Equipment and support work best when matched to the individual. Research in this area documents students being issued standard kit — a computer mouse, or a Braille display provided before Braille literacy was established — simply because it was the default equipment package, which wastes resources and can leave a student feeling unheard rather than supported.
Most of the barriers in this category are about how materials and systems are built, not about vision itself. A well-structured, accessible document removes the barrier entirely; an inaccessible one creates a barrier no amount of individual adaptation can fully compensate for in the moment.
Common assumptions to avoid: that all visually impaired students use Braille; that an agreed adjustment will automatically be delivered by everyone involved in teaching or assessment without separate verification; that a student's own account of what they can or cannot do needs to be checked against staff assumptions