Techniques to assess the vision, hearing, and speech and language of multihandicapped children are briefly described. Interferences in normal vision functioning and development during infancy can be identified and intervention initiated early in the child's life. Obtaining an in-depth history from the parents is the first step. It is essential that all infants identified as "at-risk" or handicapped, nonverbal mentally impaired preschool children, and multihandicapped persons have comprehensive visual evaluations prior to any special education planning and/or programs. Behavioral as well as electrophysiologic techniques have clinical utility for hearing assessment of the infant and multihandicapped child. Testing with an observational technique is an alternative to conventional adult procedures. By the age of 2 years, some children can be conditioned to respond to pure tone audiometry via a play response to a stimulus. For speech and language assessment, informal evaluative methods are useful for the multihandicapped youngster. In cases of the nonverbal or unintelligible multihandicapped child, the pragmatic aspect of the child's communication skills (i.e., the intent) should be assessed. When a child fails to demonstrate any meaningful communicative skills, it will be necessary to rely on a cognitive assessment to evaluate the prelanguage level. Ordinal scales of psychological development are also helpful to assess the infant's speech and language. A list of 18 references is appended. (SEW)