CHENNAI: Shazia Fathima and Arihant Jain are both deaf and blind but have been trained to communicate by tactile finger spelling, which is a method of touching their palms and fingers to indicate the English alphabets manually. While Shazia is partially sighted, Arihant has over the years turned 100% visually challenged. They are students of Dipti Karnad, Principal of Clarke School for Deaf.
A series of communications through tactile signing were demonstrated during a day-long workshop on Monday organised by the school in a quiet bylane off Radhakrishna Salai in
Mylapore
on the occasion of the 136th birth anniversary of deaf-blind American author
Helen Keller
. Clarke School for Deaf was founded in 1970 by a specialist in education of the deaf, Leelavathy Patrick and medical practitioner S K Nagarajan whose son S N Srikanth has taken over the mantle after his demise. It takes its name from the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech at Massuchussets in the
United States
.
'Helen Keller Day' saw 38 participants from special schools coming together at the workshop organised by the school on the request of the state commissioner for the differently-abled and the state resource cum training center.
The workshop was inaugurated by founder director of Frontline Eye Hospital Dr N Krishnan who has two daughters with hearing impairment. There were presentations on Deafblindness and its implications, demonstrations on how to teach children with Deafblindness, sessions on teaching strategies and orientation and mobility techniques.
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