Individual social skills training and co-worker training for supported employees with dual sensory impairment. Two case examples.

Two adults with both vision and hearing loss got jobs in the community. The team first taught each person new social skills like greeting co-workers. Later they taught the co-workers how to cue and reward those skills.

Social talk at work went up after the individual lessons. It went up even more after the co-workers learned their part. Starting with the employee first gave the biggest jump.

Huguenin et al. (1980) did the same one-on-one BST steps with adults who had intellectual disability years earlier. They also saw gains that lasted one month, but they stopped at the individual layer.

Walsh et al. (2018) and Grob et al. (2019) later added video clips and extra prompts for adults with autism. They got strong gains too, showing the idea stretches across diagnoses.

McMillan et al. (1997) warned that kids with hearing loss only used new skills after teachers added generalization plans. Gaylord-Ross et al. (1995) did not test generalization, so that step is still missing here.

If you support employees with sensory loss, teach the worker first, then the team. This two-step method is quick, low-cost, and fits real work routines. Add multiple exemplars and follow-up probes so the skills travel across shifts and settings.