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TOUCH AND FEEL A mother walks her visually-impaired daughter through a park

Thousands of questions race across my mind. How are they taught?

And, so this story was born.

It seeks to answer two questions: one born out of curiosity, and the other out of concern. — How are the visually challenged taught? How should we approach them?

Rahiman Chand Bhasha gradually, but totally, lost his vision when he was around five.

The visuals he knows are confined to what he remembers from then. An advocate based in Coimbatore, he says that after primary school, he joined a regular school in Andhra Pradesh, when Integrated Education (IED) was still in its infancy. Teachers would sit with special children after school hours, and teach them subjects such as maths and science, using embossed papers or cuttings.

Most of the learning happened through touch and feel, he says.

Says Premavathy Vijayan, Head, Department of Special Education, Avinashilingam University for Women, that at the primary level, the focus is on language development, which is cultivated through incessant talking. Further, parents and teachers are counselled to teach them daily living activities such as eating, bathing, combing and dressing, and, most importantly, mobility training.

“When it comes to social skills, the help and support of the peer group plays a vital role,” she says. As touch and feel is very important, models have a great part in teaching them to explore. For instance, the model of an animal or any other object is used to teach shapes; a woollen thread runs across the contours of the Indian map; bindis are pasted to teach counting etc. Just as important is the use of the olfactory senses. They know it when they cross a flower market, a pantry or a toilet.

However, colour is something the congenitally blind will have to make do without.

But, M. Anjum Khan says that they learn colours by relating to objects or situations. For instance, that blood is red, and the sky is blue. “Imagination is the key to learning.

In the day, the sky is bright; during rain, it has dark clouds; and at night, it is dark, and has stars and the moon,” says this first-year M.A. English Literature student at the University.

Braille is one of the chief sources of reading and writing.

They now also have the Perkins Brailler which is similar to the typewriter. And, Anjum types incredibly swiftly on the machine.

At the higher level, learning also happens through continuous student-teacher interaction, listening to tapes of lessons, and with the aid of computers.

More than the teaching, it is the sensitivity of the others that the visually impaired look for.

“Do not use sign language when we are around,” says Jothi Mani.M.N.G. Mani, secretary general of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment, says that while talking to the visually impaired, one should not hesitate to use words such as ‘blind’, ‘look’, ‘see’ etc., and talking about colours.

When a visually impaired person is in a meeting, he/she should be introduced to the others present, and vice-versa.

Inform the person when you leave. Never speak loudly, for they can hear like the others. To move, always guide them, don’t push, he advises.

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