Editor’s Note: This story is personal. I was born with albinism and am visually impaired. As a child, I was a participant in West Virginia University’s Children’s Vision Rehabilitation Program. The tools, support, and community provided through CVRP played a meaningful role in my development and independence. Covering the screening of Sight Unseen and revisiting CVRP was both a professional assignment and a moment of reflection. Seeing today’s children — some navigating the same challenges I once faced — offered a powerful reminder of how far this program reaches and why its work matters. This story is told not only through my experience, but through the voices of the students and professionals who continue to shape CVRP’s impact across West Virginia.
MORGANTOWN — As the lights dimmed inside the Erickson Alumni Center on Friday evening, the room settled into a rare stillness — one filled not with silence, but with understanding.
For many in attendance, the screening of “Sight Unseen,” a new documentary highlighting West Virginia University’s Children’s Vision Rehabilitation Program (CVRP), was an opportunity to witness the lives of blind and visually impaired youth across the state. For others, it was a reflection of years of support, advocacy and quiet victories.
For this journalist, it felt like stepping into a time machine.
As children with albinism moved through the room — one young boy in particular — it was impossible not to reflect on the long road behind and the distance traveled since childhood. The smiles, the nervous energy, the confidence still forming — all of it echoed familiar moments. The sense of belonging inside that room was unmistakable.
CVRP, housed within the WVU Eye Institute and the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, has been doing this work for nearly three decades.
Established in 1996, the Children’s Vision Rehabilitation Program is a needs-based initiative serving blind and visually impaired school-aged children across West Virginia. The program provides comprehensive services regardless of a family’s ability to pay, offering clinical vision evaluations, assistive technology, orientation and mobility training, occupational therapy, educational recommendations, summer camps, parent support, and follow-up services throughout the state.
What began with evaluations of six children in its first year has grown to serving more than 100 children annually — with a waiting list that underscores the program’s continued demand, particularly in rural communities.
Rebecca Coakley, program director of CVRP, said the documentary grew from a desire to finally tell those stories.
“This started about two years ago while I was in Guatemala,” Coakley said. “There was a film director there working on another project, and he said, ‘We’ve got to tell this story.’ He followed our kids for about 18 months, and what we thought might be an informational film became something much bigger.”
That film, “Sight Unseen,” follows six primary CVRP students and examines how vision loss intersects with education, independence, family life, and — in many cases — challenges far beyond eyesight.
“Sometimes blindness or visual impairment is not their most handicapping condition,” Coakley said. “Our kids are dealing with so many things, and this film shows just how capable they are.”
Michael Graziano, the documentary’s director, said the project evolved naturally as the stories unfolded.
“Once I got to know Becky, the CVRP team, and the kids, I realized this was an incredible story people needed to hear,” Graziano said. “It’s character-driven. There’s no smoke and mirrors. The hardest part was figuring out what to cut.”
Filmed over more than a year across West Virginia, “Sight Unseen” focuses on resilience — not as inspiration, but as reality.
“It’s about people overcoming challenges that are part of the society they live in and the disabilities they carry,” Graziano said. “And it’s also about how one small group of people, with the right motivation, can make an incredible impact.”
For CVRP students like Drew Moorman, a high school student from Charleston, that impact is deeply personal.
“CVRP has always been like a second home for me,” Moorman said. “Sometimes I feel more at home there than with family or friends, because I don’t stick out. I’m equal. That’s what matters to me — equality.”
Moorman, who lives with multiple visual and medical conditions, said the event felt surreal.
“I didn’t sleep much the night before,” he said. “I kept thinking, ‘This isn’t imaginary anymore. It’s actually happening.’”
Miriam Beall, an orientation and mobility specialist with CVRP, said the screening was designed to highlight both progress and possibility.
“‘Sight Unseen’ really shows how we’re trying to bridge the gap so students can be as independent as possible,” Beall said. “It’s emotional — there are sad moments, but also incredibly uplifting ones that show just how capable our kids are.”
CVRP’s mission is rooted in access — access to the visual environment, education, technology and independence. Its multidisciplinary team includes pediatric ophthalmology, low-vision specialists, occupational therapy, orientation and mobility experts, assistive technology professionals, and educators working together to meet each child’s individual needs.
Low vision, defined as visual impairment that cannot be corrected beyond 20/70, often presents unique challenges in classrooms designed around sight. For children who are legally blind — 20/200 vision or worse — or blind with minimal light perception, those challenges are compounded.
CVRP exists to ensure those challenges are not faced alone.
Friday’s screening was not just a celebration of a documentary, but of a community — one that spans families, educators, clinicians and children learning to navigate the world on their own terms. Plans are in the works for the documentary to be hosted on a streaming service so that other interested parties and the general public may experience it, too.
For those who have walked that path before, the room felt full in a different way.
There was gratitude. There was pride. And there was a quiet understanding that programs like CVRP do more than rehabilitate vision — they help children see themselves clearly.
And sometimes, they give adults the chance to look back and recognize just how far they’ve come, just as I did.
