Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!343!71!Mitch.Turbin
From: Mitch.Turbin@f71.n343.z1.fidonet.org (Mitch Turbin)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: More Thoughts!
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Date: 17 Jan 91 15:18:08 GMT
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[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Hi Karen,

I was interested to read your note. Nice to see a person opening up to 
different disabilities. So here's a new one for you to consider--deaf-
blindness. Of course, like all sensory impairments, this one runs along a long 
continuum of "severity". I for instance, have usable hearing and vision, tho 
significant problems in both (as well as significant coping strategies for 
each, and both!) And the interesting thing, that is, the most interesting 
thing for me about this disability, is the way that the two impairments 
interract. It's often said that here is not a case where hearing loss is added 
to vision loss--it's more multiplicative in it's increase in problems. Well, 
I'm not sure about the specific quantification, but one thing is sure--it can 
drive you crazy to realize that the coping strategies that help other HI 
people won't work for me any more, cuz I don't have the vision. And vice versa-
-the ways in which hearing helps most blind people don't work for those of us 
who also have hearing impairments. 

Quite a challenge. I thank God I wasn't born a few hundred years ago, before 
hearing aids, flexible canes and infrared/ultraviolet blocking lenses, and 
computers! Wow, I'd probably been in some kind of institution, if not just 
plain dead!!!
'nuff said
Mitch

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