Abstract
One of the pressing matters of today’s society is definitely the importance of accommodation and inclusion of deaf-blind students into regular educational environment. Deaf-blindness means the combination of the hearing and visual impairment which leads to the loss of person’s communication skills, as well as different developmental and educational needs. The problem of modern world, concerning students with such disabilities, consists in the accepted truth that the majority of typical education classes fail to provide appropriate tools for the accommodation of deaf-blind children.
The participation of deaf-blind students in general class activities is almost impossible, because of the absence of lessons accommodated for their special needs. In this paper we made an attempt to discuss in details the topic of deaf-blindness, including its main characteristics, causes, identification process and prevalence. The main emphasis was placed on deaf-blind students and their learning characteristics. The paper presented necessary information about accommodations and modifications that can be used in the classroom for students with these disabilities, as well as some of the productive assistive technology resources that may enhance their learning. In order to make our article more reliable and visually expressive, we included there two content-relevant infographics and gave several links to professional organizations for additional information about the discussed topic of deaf-blindness.
Team A Members are: Bryan, Andrea, Joshua and Melissa
– 2010 U.S. Prevalent Cases of Vision Impairment (in thousands) by Gender
Blindness in the United States (By the Numbers)
Main Characteristics of Deaf-Blindness
Deaf-blindness may be defined as the combination of the hearing and visual impairment which brings about the loss of person’s communication skills, as well as different developmental and educational needs. The key aspect of deaf-blindness consists in the fact that the combination of losses restricts people’s access to auditory and visual information and imposes requirement for the introduction of special education programs (Turkington & Sussman, 2000). Because of different access to educational resources, deaf-blindness is often referred to as a disability of information gathering.
There exist several main characteristics that learners experience on account of the mentioned impairments. First of all, students will definitely have difficulty in communicating with others in a meaningful way, especially with spoken language and may have limited vocabulary. They are often incapable of performing basic academic tasks, as well as functional life skills. Secondly, learners may have inconsequent responses to sounds or visual images. In other words, they find it very difficult to imagine the entire picture or relating one component to the integral unit, due to distorted perceptions. People with deaf-blindness, for example, perceive time in a different way. For them, it seems that time passes much more slowly than it does in reality.
Speaking about motivation of such students, the motivating factors from a situation might be simple dropped, unheard or unseen. Thirdly, students may experience retarded motor skills, including reaching and crawling. It is explained by the fact that these skills are usually motivated and further developed with the help of hearing and vision (McInnes & Treffry, 1993). It is necessary to mention there possible difficulties in maintaining and redressing an imbalance, as well as challenges with comprehending of movements. Due to the lack of context that is generally presented by means of overhearing or overseeing of key information and clues, students are unable to anticipate what will happen next. In addition, they may even have troubles with accommodating to different changes.
Causes of Deaf-Blindness
There are more than seventy possible causes of deaf-blindness. This condition can either exist at birth or develop later during lifetime. As for deaf-blindness that appears at the moment of birth, it is called congenital. This type is caused by the problems connected with premature birth that is the birth before thirty-seven weeks of pregnancy.
According to statistics, one in ten babies born prior to the stated maturity could develop some of constant disabilities such as lung disease, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness or combination of them (Turkington & Sussman, 2000). Cerebral palsy is seen as a problem with the brain and nervous system that has a considerable effect on coordination and movement. Such infections as rubella, cytomegalovirus or toxoplasmosis picked up during pregnancy may also be the cause of the appearance of deaf-blindness. Finally, special attention should be paid to fetal alcohol syndrome that is resulting from the excessive alcohol intake in pregnancy and various genetic conditions, including Down’s syndrome or charge syndrome.
Under most circumstances, deaf-blindness evolves later in life and is known formally as acquired one. People with this type of deaf-blindness may be born without any problems of senses, but later lose part or even all of hearing and sight. In the other scenario, a person may be born with some problems of hearing or vision and sometime later could possibly lose part or all of the second of two mentioned senses. Among problems that probably invoke acquired deaf-blindness, most scientists emphasize age-related hearing loss, such eye-problems as cataracts or glaucoma that are connected with increasing age, Usher syndrome which except from vision and hearing may also affect balance and different damages to the brain, from encephalitis, stroke and meningitis to serious head wounds.
Identification Process for Deaf-Blindness
Taking into consideration the fact that deaf-blind people in some cases are able to functionally utilize either hearing or vision or sometimes even both of these senses, it could be really difficult to identify that condition. Careful assessment of the functioning of these senses in everyday routine situations will undoubtedly prove useful. After such assessment, the effect of the combined sensory loss on the children’s capability to learn and evolve will come to light. It would be helpful not only utilize medical examinations of the vision and the hearing, but make described assessment on each individual person (Gargiulo, 2006). The identification of deaf-blindness must be organized by a multidisciplinary team with the use of three levels assessment.
The first level of assessment includes medical examinations. It is important to give full marks for the examination of vision and hearing. Thanks to proper medical care and surgery, the sensory loss may be improved or even completely cured in certain circumstances. The collaboration of the school units and hospitals will have a meaningful effect in this situation as well. The second level consists of functional assessment of each of the senses. Children on this level are asked to perform informal tests.
It is necessary that assessment being carried out by family members because they know their children the best. The effect of the dual sensory loss on everyday life situations is assessed in the third level. In order to obtain trustworthy results of this functional assessment, children should be motivated, feel safe and be at ease. One last thing, people who communicate with such children should be capable of doing that on the conditions of deaf-blind.
Prevalence of Deaf-Blindness
Among the population of United States of America, approximately from forty-five to fifty thousand individuals belong to deaf-blind. The category of students with multiply disabilities in the United States in the 2003-2004 school year counted nearly two thousand individuals that is 0.03% of all special education students (Gargiulo, 2006). According to the data from the 2007 National Deaf-Blind Child Count, more than ten thousand of the total number of deaf-blind are children under the age of twenty-one (National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness, 2008).
Learning Characteristics of Students with Deaf-Blindness
One of the most significant commitments is definitely the connecting of deaf-blind children with the outside world. Deaf-blind children are characterized by limited means of communication, impaired mobility and may also experience a lot of other educational problems. Educational plan for such children, thus, should be thoroughly elaborated, so that to resolve their unique problems and meet somehow their areas of interest. Individuals who are deaf-blind will always require touch as a means of ensuring that their partners agree with their centre of attraction.
The learning of objects should be organized in a nondirective way, in order to give the individuals who are deaf-blind a chance to keep track (Enos& Jordan, 1996). Deaf-blind students response time may be very slow, so teachers should just give them more time. Finally, the crucial characteristic of such children should remain permanent feeling of safety. The environment must be made free for them, so they could feel secure to get around on their own.
Accommodations and Modifications that can be used in the Classroom for Deaf-Blind Students
Basic elements of the communication systems for deaf-blind individual include: gestures, picture symbols, fingerspelling, touch cues, sign language, Tandoma method of speech reading, object symbols, lip-reading speech, Pidgin Signed English, Braille writing and reading, large print writing and reading and many others. Teachers who work with deaf-blind students are responsible for promoting interaction among children, adjusting classroom activities and materials, including the use of grouping strategies and computers.
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) for Students with Deaf-Blindness
Any child has a right to be educated with other children who are not disabled. Separate schooling, special classes or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment should only happen if supplementary aids and services cannot be satisfactorily provided in regular classes (McInnes & Treffry, 1993). Such requirement is called the least restrictive environment. Speaking about the placement of deaf-blind children, the decision concerning the setting should be grounded on the full range of settings proved adequate, if taking into account the needs of each individual.
Assistive Technology Resources that may Enhance Learning for Students with Deaf-Blindness
There exist a lot of devices that may prove useful for deaf-blindness. Telecommunication devices or TDD, for example, allow deaf individuals make telephone calls by typing in text rather than speaking. Such device as TeleBraille assists in making face-to-face communications between people who are deaf-blind and the sighted. There, instead of the ordinary text, is used special raised-dot alphabet system, Braille that appears in a screen of the machine. Finally, talking dictionaries or portable digital players that provide access to digitally recorded audio books and materials may somehow enhance learning.
Link to Professional Organizations for Additional Information About the Deaf-Blindness
http://www.aadb.org – American Association of the Deaf-Blind
http://cdd.tamu.edu – Center on Disability and Development
https://www.helenkeller.org/hknc – Helen Keller National Center For Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults
www.perkins.org – Hilton/Perkins Program
www.nfadb.org – National Family Association For Deaf-Blind
References
Enos, J. & Jordan, B. (1996). A guide for students who are deafblind considering college. Sands Point, NY: Helen Keller National Center-Technical Assistance Center, pp. 77-92.
Gargiulo, R.M. (2006). Special education in contemporary society: An introduction to exceptionality. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, pp. 44-51.
McInnes, John M. & Treffry, J. A. (1993). Deaf-blind Infants and Children: A Developmental Guide. University of Toronto Press, pp. 4-11.
National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness. (2008). The 2007 national child count of children and youth who are deaf-blind. Retrieved from: http://www.nationaldb.org/documents/products/2007-Census-Tables.pdf
Turkington, Carol & Sussman, Allen E. (2000). The Encyclopedia of Deafness and Hearing Disorders, second edition. New York: Facts on File, Inc., p.62.
