Deafblindness, also referred to as ‘dual sensory loss’, is a condition where a person has both hearing and vision loss.
Deafblindness affects people of all ages in different ways, and no two people who are deafblind are the same.
Many people will not be completely deaf or completely blind, but will have some remaining use of one or both senses. Others may also have additional physical or learning disabilities.
Symptoms and characteristics
People with deafblindness can have varying degrees of combined hearing and vision impairment. For example, a person may be:
- hard of hearing and partially sighted
- hard of hearing and completely blind
- completely deaf and partially sighted
- completely deaf and blind.
When someone is born with combined sight and hearing difficulties this is called congenital deafblindness. If a person develops hearing and vision loss later in life, this is called acquired deafblindness. This may be due to an accident, illness or as a result of aging. In some cases, people may be born with a condition such as Usher syndrome, which may mean that they progressively lose their sight and hearing.
Workplace adjustments and solutions:
As deafblindness can present in such varying degrees of either vision or hearing loss, within the workplace it is best to undertake a thorough assessment of abilities and barriers relating to disability and the tasks undertaken. Changes to the work environment or equipment used will vary with some suggestions for workplace modifications to consider including:
- determination of how persons refer to communicate, adapting workplace communication and presentation of information accordingly
- look directly at the person when communicating to enable them to use a range of cues or other senses to overcome hearing and vision loss.
Depending on the degree of vision loss, consideration given to the use of technology such as;
- magnification software to assist with computer screen magnification or the use of text to speech software for severe vision loss
- use of a larger screen to assist with viewing text, along with modification of contrast, screen vs text colours and brightness levels
- the use of magnification aids and devices either portable or desk based to magnify hard copy documents or panels such as that on a photocopier
- the use of specialised scanning software which allows rapid scanning of hard copy documents which are then saved to computer for viewing or listening via text to speech functions
- the use of other adaptive technology to overcome workplace barriers such as barcode scanners for labeling items for easy locating or braille equipment
- large button phones or mobiles with text to speech software to allow for use of text messaging
- most mobile phones contain a font magnifying application which will enlarge or magnify the screen and font
- GPS equipment with speech output, depending on hearing ability, to assist with navigation around the community or when traveling for work.
Depending on the degree of hearing and vision loss, consideration may be given to the following:
- modifying workstation set up to ensure persons are able to work facing colleagues or entry ways which allows for the use of visual cues, depending on level of vision, or other cues to compensate for loss of hearing and avoid being ‘crept up on’
- use of specialised equipment such as telephone typewriters (TTY), instant messaging or email for communication rather than phone use, text messaging on mobile phones with vibrate alerts rather than voice calls, webcams for those that use sign language to communicate
- Video Relay Service (VRS), which is a video telecommunication service that allows deaf, hard of hearing and people with speech impairment to communicate over video telephones and similar technologies with hearing people via a sign language interpreter, this can be accessed via a mobile phone using internet access and a phone that uses windows operating system
- National Relay Service (NRS), similar to VRS, using interpreters to act as a relay between you and the person you are calling, the relay officer types responses out so that you can read them—this is also accessible via a mobile phone
- visual or vibrate fire, emergency or doorbell alert systems.
The Employment Assistance Fund provides financial assistance for
work-related modifications, equipment and services to help people with disability to get employment and perform their work as independently and productively as possible. To determine eligibility, please refer to the full guidelines:
There are solutions and adjustments for the following job requirements:
References
Able Australia 2011, Deafblind Information, Able Australia, Sydney, viewed 21 July 2011, http://www.ableaustralia.org.au/resourceseducation/deafblindinfo.
Deaf Society NSW (no date specified), National Relay Service, Deaf Society NSW, Parramatta, viewed 15 September 2011, http://www.deafsocietynsw.org.au/information/nrs.html.
Sense 2011, What is Deafblindness?, Sense, London, viewed 21 July 2011, http://www.sense.org.uk/what_is_deafblindness/.