This year Oona has an intervenor (educational aide, with a skillset specific to the child’s needs) who identifies herself as DeafBlind. She is a graduate of Gallaudet who is Deaf with close vision, as a result of Usher’s Syndrome, a condition that involves progressive vision loss. In the DeafBlind community people avoid emphasizing medical diagnoses and focus instead on collective language rights, but I just wanted to explain more for the benefit of a general audience.
The intervenor herself has to be accommodated in the classroom, such as by tapping her to get her attention or making sure to sign in her range of vision, so the entire classroom space has become more competent towards low-vision ASL accessibility. I have observed that, in the short 2 months that she has been working with Oona, Oona started to sign much more.
Continue reading “On DeafBlind Intervenors”