HEllo ARdith, and Mark

I've stayed out of this for the most part, as I'm not as
familiar as are you folks who've walked the walk with this.
I know blindness, and am familiar with helping adults adjust to its onset
later on in life.  IT even took me awhile to
wrap my head around some of that, because I was born this
way, it's the only world I've known .
A couple of ARdith's comments prompted this however.
On Wed 2011-Oct-12 23:26, Ardith Hinton (1:153/716) wrote to Mark Hofmann:


AH>           Even among "typical" children & adults, generating speech
AH> requires a more complex skill set than understanding speech.  Kids
AH> who are ready to learn how to express themselves in words may be
AH> able to use gestures & sign language to cover the transitional
AH> period during which they still have difficulty using oral speech. 
AH> Nora went to a preschool group in which both were used together. The
AH> group included kids who had developmental delays for any number of
AH> reasons ... not just kids with DS... and contrary to some people's
AH> fears, we found she didn't become overly dependent on sign language.
AH> While it's a useful skill to have in one's repertoire, the majority
AH> of others don't understand it.  The net result, in Nora's case, was
AH> that it faded as her oral speech improved....  :-) 

This is always good, but there are many who've bothered to
learn sign.  My lady's eldest daughter learned sign, as she
has deafness in one ear, and a Sunday school program she
attended in Florida was very inclusive and got their deaf
members involved in all their church programs.  HEnce, when
she was a clerk at a fast food establishment years later the deaf folks who
liked to gather for coffee gravitated toward
the line she was working at the counter, as they didn't have to write out
their orders on a slip of paper, but could
converse with her naturally using sign.

The point I always emphasize with folks adjusting to
blindness later on in life, or parents of blind children is
this:

Even if you can't do things in the "normal" way the
important thing is that you get them done, and can live a
full life.  This is why you'll never hear many of us blind
folks who are considered a little more radical ever use the
word "substitute" to describe how we do things differently.
Even if that's as simple as using our dry measuring cups to
measure liquids, or a different tool to measure material for construction,
etc. You'll always hear or read us stressing
the term "alternative" because utilization of "substitute"
connotes inferiority, not quite as good as.  Whereas, using
"alternative" to describe these different methods indicates
that it works just as well.

Examples abound of the stroke victim who might not be able
to communicate effectively using oral methods, but who can
use international MOrse code, for example, or ARdith's
example of ds children learning sign.

This is the main reason that when we teach folks adjusting
to blindness these techniques we teach them with the student under
sleepshades, so that he/she learns them as a totally
blind person, and understands at the gut level that the
residual vision remaining is not the reason they are
successful using them.

Just $0.02 worth from the peanut gallery with my morning
coffee.

Regards,
           Richard
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