perspectives
 in Education and Deafness
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Practical Ideas for the Classroom and Community
Volume 16, Number 5,
May/June1998
Transition Success for
Deaf-Blind Students
Begin Early, Consider the Individual
Transition for deaf-blind students is smooth and effective if teachers begin early
and respond to the students' individual abilities and needs.
by Cynthia Ingraham
Cynthia Ingraham, MS, is the East Central Region representative for the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and
Adults in Riverdale, Maryland.
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Many educators and service providers mistakenly believe that services
and strategies to insure a smooth transition for deaf-blind students are too complex, arduous, highly sophisticated, and elaborate
to succeed (Ingraham et al., 1994). This could not be further from the truth. Fear of not being able to offer adequate
transitional support for deaf-blind students, however, often prevents educators and service providers from doing as much as they
could.
Contrary to widespread belief, a student does not need total loss of vision and hearing to be recognized under the law as
deaf-blind. Students vary in the degree of hearing and vision loss—and experience these losses in almost infinite combinations. No
two deaf-blind students have the same abilities and needs.
Successful Support
Can Mean Successful Kids
The experiences of two deaf-blind students who were placed in Gifted and Talented programs at a public school illustrate these
points. Both students received early educational intervention, including exposure to Braille and sign language, in a residential
school for the blind, where they were identified as academically gifted. Supported by the supervisor of vision programs in the
local public school district, both transitioned from the residential program to the Gifted and Talented program at a nearby junior
high school. The supervisor coordinated the services of the local technical support center, the local intermediate unit, which
offers specialized support services for students with disabilities, and the Helen Keller National Center (HKNC) regional
representative. The students' initial instruction equipped them with the necessary tools to enter the Gifted and Talented program.
One student, a boy 14 years old when he entered the junior high school, had a moderate to severe hearing loss and a total loss of
vision from retinal blastoma. To accommodate his technological needs, the supervisor of vision programs wrote a grant to purchase
a character recognition scanner, an ink-print printer, a laptop computer with refreshable Braille display, a Braille embosser, and
a telecommunication device for deaf-blind users. These gave the young man independent access to all printed information. Since he
could comprehend spoken language with a hearing aid if he sat in the front of the classroom and could express himself through
speech, he did not need a sign language interpreter for communication.
The other student was a 12-year-old girl who had a physical disability and used a walker in addition to her vision and hearing
losses. Unlike the first student, she did not have sufficient hearing to comprehend spoken language, so her primary means of
communication was through the tactile signs of an interpreter for each class. Like the first student, however, she had
intelligible speech, and she could express herself through spoken language. She received the same assistive equipment as the boy,
but her training came from a local rehabilitation and adjustment training program for the blind, not from the school.
As Thousand and Villa (1990) pointed out, transitional planning should take place ahead of major moves from one educational
program to the next. For these two students, collaboration between the home school district and the host educational program was
crucial to their success.
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Deaf-Blind Students
As The Law Sees It
Deaf-Blind is an identity that encompasses many variations of physical condition. It is defined in the 1992 Amendments to the
Rehabilitation Act as follows:
- (a) Central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye with corrective lenses or visual field restriction of 20 degrees
or less or a progressive vision loss having a diagnosis leading to either one of these conditions; (b) Chronic hearing impairments
so severe that most speech cannot be understood with optimum amplification, or a progressive hearing loss having a prognosis
leading to this condition; and (c) Persons for whom the combination of impairments described in clauses (a) and (b) causes extreme
difficulty in attaining independence in daily life activities, achieving psychological adjustments, or obtaining a vocation.
- Persons who, despite the inability to be measured accurately for hearing and vision loss due to cognitive or behavioral
restraints, or both, can be determined through functional and performance assessments to have severe hearing and visual
disabilities that cause extreme difficulty in attaining independence in daily life activities, achieving psychosocial adjustments,
or obtaining vocational objectives.
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Twin Needs:
Early Contact, Individual Assessment
Although the law does not require transitional counseling before a student reaches age 14, effective transition for deaf-blind
students begins with early intervention. This includes contact with the deaf-blind student's family, appropriate adult service
representatives, and representatives from any service agency that focuses exclusively on providing technical assistance to
deaf-blind students such as the HKNC (Ingraham et al., 1994). Professionals trained to work with deaf-blind students should
develop their curriculum. This includes deaf-blind students with cognitive disability heading for supported employment and college
bound deaf-blind students who, like the children in the above examples, require use and training with various technological
devices to fulfill their potential.
References
Ingraham, C. L., Carey, A., Vernon, M., & Berry P. (1994). Deaf-blind clients and vocational rehabilitation: Practical guidelines
for counselors. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 88, 117-127.
Thousand, J. & Villa, R., (1990). Strategies for educating learners with severe disabilities within their local home schools and
communities. Focus on exceptional Children, 23, 1-24.
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