Providing individuals the training and resources needed to ensure a smooth, successful transition from school to work.
LEARN MOREThe virtual foundation for Christie Lane School was set in 1956, when a group of Huron County parents formed the Huron County Council for Retarded Children and began working on a training center for individuals with developmental disabilities.
What began as a single classroom with one teacher and 12 students has blossomed into a respected school that has impacted the lives of thousands of families from Huron County.
Christie Lane School, originally located on the campus of the Huron County Board of Developmental Disabilities on South Norwalk Road, is now located at 120 Shady Lane Drive. Education services are provided to individuals with developmental disabilities from age 6 through 21. Students are placed in our school age program through their local school district.
Certified teachers and paraprofessionals take a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching, offering educational experiences along with life and functional living skills. Christie Lane School offers a functional curriculum, as well as:
speech, physical and occupational therapy.
Your team works with you in your home or other places you and your family spend time to develop a coordinated plan called an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP).
You and your team will work through your IFSP to use your existing supports and resources—and build upon them—to learn to enhance your child’s learning and development.
The Early Childhood Services office is located in the Elizabeth Gerken Child and Family Center at 120 Shady Lane Drive, Norwalk, Ohio.
Services for children with developmental concerns are a component of the Huron County Board of Developmental Disabilities. Early identification and family-centered services are available to infant and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities and their families.
Specialized Services are provided in your home or child’s natural environment. A “coaching model” of service provision is used by our team of specialists.
Specialized Services are provided in your home or child's natural environment. A "coaching model" of service provision is used by our team of specialists.
This team provides developmental evaluations and service provision to eligible children and families. The family's priorities, needs, and interests are addressed most appropriately by a primary provider who represents and receives team and community support.
This team is staffed by Developmental Specialists, an Occupational Therapist, Physical Therapist, Speech Language Pathologist and Certified "Play Project" staff.
Interventions with young children and family members must be based on explicit principles, validated practices, best available research and relevant laws and regulations.
Healthy Families America—through both its research and training—seeks to leverage the passion and talent of qualified staff to administer proven tactics that result in stronger families.
Healthy Families America transforms not only the families we serve but the communities they live in by delivering evidence-based services that help children and families thrive.
Recognize the critical role you and other caregivers play in your child’s life as their first teachers.
Meet families where they are in a compassionate, non-judgmental way and develop a strong, healthy and supportive relationship.
Weekly visits are recommended, especially with new families and newborn babies. Frequent visits, especially in the early stages, are very beneficial in establishing a relationship with your family and getting to know ways to best help. We understand the unique needs and schedules every family has, so we offer flexible scheduling options to accommodate your family.
Help Me Grow Home Visitors come to you and your family at a time that works best for you. The most common place where we visit with our families is in their homes because there’s no place like your home for learning how to be the best parent for your child. However, we are flexible to visit wherever your family feels most comfortable. Some families feel more comfortable meeting at a local library or when weather is nice a park or playground.
Providing individuals the training and resources needed to ensure a smooth, successful transition from school to work.
LEARN MOREThe Board is committed to providing funding for services that will help individuals or families to maintain...
LEARN MOREWe customize our programs to the wants and needs of the individuals we serve.
LEARN MOREHuron County Board of Developmental Disabilities
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to