This is absolutely an amazing video on what a blind person can do by using mouth clicks (echolocation) in order to manipulate and function in his environment. Truly inspirational and motivating! Makes you wonder about the potential we don't access each and every day! Please make sure you also view the videos that are at the bottom of the main one - there is one entitled in Loving Memory - a must watch!
Food for thought!
Ben - His Legacy
Trachoma is an infectious eye disease and is caused by a bacterial infection. It has become the world's leading cause of infectious blindness. It is a preventable disease, however it is highly prevalent in Ethiopia due to the conditions there and the lack of clean water. This disease has led to approximately 8 million people worldwide being visually impaired. This is a considerable disability. There are also approximately 84 million people in the world who have some form of active infection.
This disease can be spread in the following ways:
Direct contact such as touching infected eye secretions
Other forms of direct contact such as touching infected nasal or throat secretions
Indirect contact such as touching contaminated items – example, towels, sheets, blankets or clothing
Flies that seek out the eyes.
This video is one person's story of their experience with Trachoma as well as documents the disability this causes. This story happens to be in Ethiopia, which is where most of this disease seems to occur. The reasons are that there is not clean water for hygiene purposes and this leads to infections such as trachoma.
Worldwide, there are organizations that are assisting the people of Ethiopia and attempting to lessen the number of people infected with this disease. One such example of these efforts can be viewed in this link from YouTube.
Trachoma is commonly caused from poor hygiene, crowded housing and poverty. It can also be referred to as Sandy Blight.
One of the world organizations dealing with Trachoma prevention is an organization working in Kenya. Their goal is to minimize the incidents of Trachoma in this country. Some of their strategies are found on their website at http://sightsaversusa.org/our_work/where_we_work/east_africa/11470.html
A brief synopsis of their work is as follows:
66 itinerant and contact teachers were trained in Braille and low vision. This will hopefully improve services to children and minimize over-reliance on itinerant services at district level.
Our partner the Kenya Union of the Blind has successfully produced 16 textbook editions in talking book format, as part of the assistive technology programme. This will boost the accessibility of learning materials among visually impaired students in secondary schools.
The last phase of the Trachoma Control Programme took place, with a phase mass antibiotic treatment targeting 500,000 people in the Kajiado District.
Two ophthalmologists were posted to district hospitals in two Sight Savers supported programmes, which is a great improvement given that in the past ophthalmologists have only been rendering services in provincial hospitals.
One type of Assistive Technology that can be used for individuals affected by blindness, whether from glaucoma, trachoma or other eye diseases (infectious or otherwise) would be echolocation as was used by Ben in the video above. They can use tongue clicks to hear the differences in sound (much like dolphins do) to orient themselves. Ben obviously was a pro with this, however I am sure that others could develop these skills as well in order to get around in their environment and have control over their lives. Ben definitely was the inspiration for this. You could also adapt this by using an electronic clicking device or manual clicking device to distinguish different sounds in your environment. You could use a low tech clicking device which would not cost a great deal of money or a high tech device from a supplier that will likely cost more. It depends on the needs of the person and what their preference would be, as per the MPTTT framework. The milieu would be to assist them with functioning in their environment; their personality would determine what type of device they would use - they may be comfortable using tongue clicks or they may want a portable device (high or low tech). In terms of the time, task and technology, that speaks for itself when determining that they will need to have time to become familiar with using clicking devices and for given functions, depending on the device they use.
Janice,
ReplyDeleteYou found a terrific video. It is truly amazing what people can do, especially if they feel empowered as his mom said. She truly does presume competency.