I too have a voice!
e-Sense – the Software for the Education of Children with Deafblindness
The conference: We turned the pandemic challenge into an opportunity
For Children and Young People – Deafblindness during the Pandemic
For Specialists – Deafblindness during the Pandemic
Vasile Adamescu – You cannot live without love
Today, professor Vasile Adamescu would have turned 76 years old. Please read below a few words written with warmth by his friend and interpreter, Viorel Micu.
On September 5th 1944, in the vilage Borcea, Ialomița County, on the left shore of the Danube river, Vasile Adamescu is born, the second child of Zamfir and Voica, a family of poor, but hard working peasants. Vasilică, as he was called by those close to him, was to go through a terrible misfortune: following meningitis, he loses both his hearing and his sight, when he was only 2 years old. He remains like that, silent and sad, spending an unhappy childhood on the dirt roads of his village until the age of 11. Then, he is taken to the School for Visually Impaired in Cluj, where he meets his teacher, Florica Sandu, a kindhearted and skilled special education teacher, who sees his potential and succeeds in bringing him out of darkness and silence.
Gifted with a will of iron and an inexhaustible thirst for knowledge, Adamescu quickly absorbs every information and succeeds the impossible. He acquires speech, manages to learn a communication system easy to use by all those around him (The Block Alphabet, the writing of capital letters on the palm or other parts of the body), goes through 18 years of school and then becomes a university student studying Special Education.
One must take into account though the relentless work of his teachers, who had the advantage of being able to work with him individually, due to the fact that the Ministry of Education approved the establishment of a class where he was the only student.
If in the beginning he only knew a few signs to ask for water or food, over the years, the child who did not seem to have any chance of leading a relatively normal life, becomes a man useful to society, as he always liked to say. After graduating university, he returns to the school where he once studies, making his teachers proud. He teaches children with multisensory impairments for more than 30 years. Many generations went through his hands, and for them, Vasile Adamescu was the calm and loving teacher, that you go to with love.
Throughout his life, he fought for the rights of people with disabilities, particularly people with deafblindness, towards a better life for them, access to education and social life.
Passionate about arts and sculpture, he graduates the School of Arts, where he polishes his native talent. He worked on thousands of clay works, from birds and animals to cars and busts of great personalities.
He wrote his memoirs, publishing a series of volumes called Confronting Life, a book showing that nothing is impossible.
He receives countless awards and decorations, the most important of them – the National Order of Merit with the High Rank of Knight, given by the Romanian President, the title Senior Citizen of the City given by the Cluj Napoca town-hall, Promoter of the Rights of People with Deafblindness given by Sense International Romania.
”Love is a peculiar feeling, hard to express in words… i don’t even know if there is a clear definition. I believe that love is like air. You cannot live without love” says Vasile Adamescu.
At the end of year 2018, Vasile Adamescu passes away, going to a better world. He was not afraid of death, because he trusted God. Still, he had dreams, plans, hopes. It is our duty to never forget Vasile Adamescu the teacher, the mentor, the writer, the artist, the person who always surrounded us with warmth, smiling to us, giving us advice, loving us and using all his skills to educate children with disabilities in our country.
#thursdayplay – Playing Seasons
Tactile Printer One – from dream to reality
Taliking with Dan Patzelt
Today we are talking with Dan Patzelt about Tactile Printer One and more.
We met Dan in 2019 when we became partners in the Tactile Printer One project, a project funded by the Orange Foundation through the World through Color and Sound Program 2019. A project initiated by the Association for Urban Development in partnership with the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Lions Club Arad, Tandem Association, Sense International Romania and the National Library of Romania, which comes to the aid of people with visual and multisensory impairments and aims to make their information accessible.
Who is Dan Patzelt and what motivates him?
Dan Patzel is a stubborn person. Which if he believes in something, he holds on with his teeth until he succeeds. Falls are successful, right? (laughs)
When you’ve been working with visually impaired people for 10 years, you’re forced into introspection every day. You learn to look at yourself with other eyes. You learn to measure each action in such a way that you do not trample on each other’s space, freedoms and rights.
Some people would say I’m nosy by nature, but I like to help if I’m not asked. I get involved because I think of humanity as a part of us. And I think that’s exactly my motivation. I have a crazy thirst to help (change) people.
Tell us about the projects you are working on (including the one we are partners in).
The project I’m working on now is a story that started 10 years ago. Back then, I did advocacy projects, made museums accessible, organized tactile exhibitions. When I realized that a blind child can’t enjoy a painting unless he has a specialist by his side to guide his hand and patiently explain what he’s touching, I thought that we need a change. That even these children should be able to enjoy the art at any time.
And that’s how I turned the idea that blind people should be able to discover the world, concepts or objects that they can’t touch on their own, into my mission.
After a decade of work, blind children can now independently explore images using a mobile app, enjoy the presence of the specialist at the museum or at their home.
Although I started from an experience in the museum, the desire is to change for the better the education of children with special needs. On the tactile Images e-learning platform, teachers and parents have free access to drawings that describe audio, the chance to create their own materials and install the assistant app on their children’s phone. Thus, they can give children access to homeschooling and remote teaching, vital in the context of the pandemic.
When we created the app that describes audio drawings, we were thinking about visually impaired children. But there are other categories of children with special educational needs who are dependent on a specialist when they want to explore drawings and need personalized materials. That is why we have joined several partners in the “Tactile Printer One” project, funded by the Orange Foundation. To create drawings tailored to the needs of as many children as possible. With the Tandem Association, we will create maps of cities where there are large communities of blind people, and with Sense International Romania and the National Library we will create educational content that can be used in any classroom.
In addition to expanding to other special needs, “Tactile Printer One” also means the development of a tactile printer that will greatly reduce the costs of embossing drawings. This is where specialists from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest come to the scenes, who are working at its production.
Now we are also working on a new tactile catalogue, with which children with special needs will be able to discover the fascinating world of electricity on their own. This is where Electrica SA came to support us.
To help as many children with special needs to study on their own, the next project would be to make the assistant app for Android (it is currently only available for iOS). But for that we need support. If those who read us want to help, they can do it here: www.tactileimages.org
How can deafblind children benefit from these projects?
I think the best example is the tactile catalogues that I mentioned above. Let’s talk a little bit about “Urban Landscapes”, the first self-described tactile catalogue, which we created in collaboration with ING Bank and which anyone can download for free here: bit.ly/UrbanLandscapes-Page.
Simplified drawings contain not only audio descriptions, but also Braille descriptions, to allow children with deafblindness to independently explore intangible objects. They can find out for themselves what animals, traffic signs, public transportation or buildings look like.
“Urban Landscapes” and “Electric Network” are just two of the tactile catalogues created, we have also worked on catalogues with portraits of historical figures, with descriptions signed by the Center for Historical Consulting, catalogues with vehicles, biology or geography, made with the help of OMV Petrom. They will be free to be downloaded to allow children with deafblindness to discover new things and deepen school subjects.
We invite parents of children with deafblindness to join the Tactile Images platform to create their own self-described drawings, to which they can also add descriptions in Braille. Only together can we help children with special needs enjoy a fulfilled life through easy access to education!
10 Things to Know About Deafblindness
Article signed by Tracy Stines, a person with deafblindness, a writer and a promoter of the rights of people with deafblindness.
Busting the Stereotypes of Deafblindness
I was born deaf and legally blind. Throughout the years, I’ve had to explain and correct so many misconceptions out there.
For many people, when hearing the word “deafblind,” they instantly think of Helen Keller, the deafblind author.
People need to know that deafblindness is not “totally deaf and totally blind,” but actually a spectrum. Some may have low vision and be hard of hearing, others may be deaf and have limited vision, or be totally blind but hard of hearing.
I label myself as a Deafblind person, yet I wear glasses with limited correction and use a white cane. I also have a Cochlear Implant and can identify environmental sounds, but cannot understand speech without close lipreading.
Other Deafblind may hear and speak very well and can carry a conversation on a cellphone or not use a white cane regularly but have trouble navigating in dark areas and at night.
Whatever our variation in hearing or vision loss, here are 10 things you need to know about Deafblindness:
1) Please do not question our ability to see or hear.
A while back all across social media there was a viral picture of a woman with a white cane looking at a smartphone. There were many negative comments and doubts about her “blindness.”
As I already mentioned, deafness, blindness, and deafblindness are all on a spectrum of limitations. No two people will have the same degree of loss or even the same level of coping and independence.
We do not need to prove anything to you.
2) If you’re in our space, please do not move things around.
If you’re visiting someone with Deafblindness, do not move things around. We need things exactly where we’ve placed them so we can quickly find them again.
There’s no “scanning” visually for it, so if something’s moved, it takes us a long time to find it by touch. Even moving something a foot away, it is still “lost” to me.
This still applies in public spaces such as a restaurant. If we placed our fold-up cane, phone, or purse on a table or chair, please ask permission to move those before touching them.
If you do move something, tell us exactly where you put it.
To read the full article, please go HERE.
June is about deafblindness
June is about deafblindness
Every year, in June, we have celebrated Helen Keller alongside children and young people with deafblindness and multisensory impairments from our partner schools, their parents, siblings and teachers. We asked a few questions on this from our colleague, Ramona Antonie, Programmes Manager with Sense International Romania, responsible with this wonderful activity in the organization. Here are her answers.
1. What does June of each year mean for Sense International Romania?
One word: Awareness!
Many years ago, more than 10 years ago, Sense International Romania began to celebrate Helen Keller, a person recognized internationally as the first person with deafblindness, which means someone who has both visual and hearing impairments.
In order to raise awareness of this category of people, it was necessary to find a person who is representative among the population, who was born with or acquired deafblindness throughout her life and had exceptional achievements, and then to promote her among our partners, our acquaintances, on media channels and online to the local and national community.
Why Helen Keller? Because if you look at Helen Keller and study her life, you realize that every child with deafblindness is able to achieve something meaningful in life.
Going on the same pattern, we chose this month, June, because Helen Keller was born on June 27th 1880.
A few words about Helen Keller: Helen was a strong person and extremely determined to study, and with the support from dedicated people, as was her teacher Anne Sullivan, managed to change her destiny and become a symbol recognized throughout the world.
She studied and received the Magna cum laude as the first person with both impairments to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree, and then obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard. She traveled extensively and campaigned for the rights of people with disabilities and for access to equal opportunities for disadvantaged groups.
It’s important to point out that this disability is recognized in Romania by Law 448/2006 as deafblindness, alongside physical, visual, hearing, associated, rare diseases, so on, that people who have this double hearing and sight impairment can get the deafblindness certificate, although most people with deafblindness in our country have either hearing impairment or sight impairment on their disability certificate, even if they have both senses affected.
The June message we're sending?
Any child with deafblindness can do more than you might think if given the chance and support to reach their potential.
It's a message of hope focused both on parents of children with deafblindness, on young people and adults with this disability, but especially on educational, social and economic decision-makers.
2. You have been involved in the activities organized for the Helen Keller International Week from the beginning. How did these activities evolve over time?
With painter Ovidiu Kloska, Focșani, 2019 © Gabriel Ciribașa
I could say that we started with small steps, from smaller to larger in an increasingly structured, transparent and open way for any school that wanted to carry out such activities. The minimal criterion is that there are children with deafblindness/multisensory impairments in these schools, who are involved in specific activities. Also, we have encouraged collaborative projects between special schools and mainstream schools so as to increase the level of cooperation and acceptance between students, regardless of whether students with disability study or not in those mainstream schools.
Over time, we were surprised by dedicated teachers from our partner schools with a multitude of activities starting from trips and orientation and mobility activities in the mountains, at the seaside, in various cities and museums, modeling, painting and finger painting, horse therapy, saline therapy, pool hours, cooking workshops, preparing various pastries, gardening, painting with light and puppet theatre, pamphlet creation and distribution to other colleagues, surprise parties, huge puzzles, sensory tracks and the list continues.
If we were to estimate a number of children in the 10 years or so of Helen Keller's activities on the basis of the activity reports we have, these activities were attended by over 5000 students, 500 of them with deafblindness.
3. What's different this year?
Transparent masks, 2020 © Gabriel Ciribașa
This year was definitely different in a way that we could not have predicted when we did our project planning, respectively the experience of an international pandemic generated by the Sars-Cov-2 virus, which put in front of us the challenge of continuing our activities in a completely different way. Thus, after team consultations within Sense International Romania, as well as with our partners in the education system, we have shifted the funds raised for the Helen Keller project in the acquisition of transparent masks useful to hearing-impaired students that we have directed where we have been asked to, various educational materials for children and parents, but also through the acquisition of hygienic-sanitary materials so that those school activities that take place during this period – national evaluations for students in the final years, be carried out in maximum safety for both pupils and teachers.
Below is the message of Professor Manuela Ionescu, from CSEI 2 Sibiu:
Thank you for the masks! These are very useful to students with hearing impairment because they can read lips and at the same time much of the face remains free so that it is easier to understand the facial expressions, making it easier to dialogue with children.
We hope that next year we will return to the activities we were doing with love with students with deafblindness and multisensory impairments.
I felt the lack of joy of a happy child's smile, a colorful balloon lifted to the sky with Helen Keller's name, photos of students happy with the novelty of some discoveries from a pleasant activity and the happiness of knowing that YOU can do something by your own forces, as well as some hashtags specific to this month that constantly appeared on the organization's Facebook page :
#helenkeller #dincolodesimturi #surdocecitate #numeleșcolii #SenseInternationalRomania
4. What is your most beautiful memory of Helen Keller International Week?
Bucharest, 2013 © Sense International Romania Archive
I don't know if it is fair to say that I only have one memory which I consider the most beautiful. I certainly have several memories of celebrating Helen Keller, from the young children in kindergarten who explored with their hands and feet various materials and textures and were extremely happy about it, to planting flowers and shrubs in the school garden or attending a hypotherapy session with them as was the case with 3 of our partners from Bucharest and Iaşi, to raising colored balloons with a group of enthusiastic children from Sibiu, or to accompany young people in their final years on a visit to a printing press or in the framework of a painting workshop with partners from Focşani, or to taste a wonderful cake with our partners from Oradea, and the examples can continue.
I could not choose just one beautiful moment because there is a whole collection of happy moments that resulted in happy smiles and the message that children and young people with deafblindness constantly convey: "I too can!"