Visual and Hearing Impairments: by Lila Sharma

Presentation is important to persuade about something. We were in group presentation in our speech class and it was our second presentation. Our topic was ‘disabilities’ which includes the information, ideas and knowledge of it. Presentation were interesting and convincible through PowerPoint. It was understandable and informative.

Firstly, Parents are first friend and home are a small world for children. If parents react too much to their children, they may get angry, bargain unnecessarily, cry and feel lost and alone. Hence, if parents are understanding at that age, then there is less chance for problem to exist. If a child has an impairment, then it’s not a good idea to compare them with another normal child. Because, they won’t be able to express themselves as normal child does which causes them to feel guilty.

            Secondly, we talked about visual impairment. It means having lower visual capacity or, totally cannot see, so those people feel darkness of world. However, if capable person understands and motivate them, they feel positivity and feel happy to enjoy their life. Additionally, we explained about history of blindness in the 1260 A.D after which people perspective of visually impaired changed.

King Louis established the first organization for the blind. At that time, blind people did not have any education method and Braille was not developed. The 19^th century Denis Diderot, who was a French philosopher invented the Braille writing system. Organization started to increase day by day. National Federation of the Blind (NEB) and American Council of the Blind (ACB) are the organization of blind people while in here, there is Florida outreach center for the blind. On the other side, totally blind person needs more support than slight vision impaired person. Fortunately, visual impairment person can use some aids and devices for mobility such as dogs which are regarded as best friend, so they train them and get help to pick up things and guidance for walk. Likewise, canes which has ray electronic and ultra-sensor help them to walk. On the other side, they can use devices such as jaws screen reader, able data, and most importantly Braille displays.

Thirdly, we discussed about hearing impairment. It means a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds. It is caused by many factors, including; genetic, age, illness, physical trauma etc. According to the history of deafness, Benderizine monk, Pedro Ponce de lean who created a means to teach deaf people to speak using a variety of hand gestures and symbols. Nowadays, sign

language become more common, a unique identity. Unfortunately, millions deaf people do not have access to study and some deaf people do not have the protection of human rights. They are depriving from education, employment, medical care etc. Deaf people can do anything that hearing people can do expect to hear clearly. Fortunately, they can use some devices and aids; such as sign language, speech from text, voice recognition software and alerting devices etc. We gave audience the tips about how to communicate with hearing impaired and utilizing the resources in Miami Dade Collage including special services, sign language, interpreter etc. On the other hand, we discussed the problem faced by disable person such as domestic violence, sexual abuse etc.

           In my opinion, people with visual and hearing impairment are still facing challenges for education, job opportunities etc. This requires serious attention of concerned authorities to come up with possible solutions.