The Box of Deafblindness™
Kimberly Lauger
Perspectives on Deafblindness
Deafblindness is a unique disability involving a
combined vision and hearing loss. With only vision loss, the sense of hearing can become more
acute and educational strategies often involve the
use of hearing. With only hearing loss, vision is
relied on for gathering information, and educational strategies are often visual in nature. We
recognize that vision compensates for the reduced hearing and hearing compensates for the
reduced vision. With deafblindness, there is not
enough vision or hearing to compensate for the
other sense, so the impacts of these losses are
multiplicative (McInnes, 1999).
Deaf education occurs in a visual environment often relying on a visual language and visual based
tools and strategies to reach students. Education
for the students with visual impairment may involve modifying the visual environment and often
includes auditory teaching strategies. In any educational environment where communication and
environmental information is constantly changing
the deafblind student is likely to experience the
world and learning differently than students with
one type of sensory impairment. It is easy to see
why Alsop and colleagues (2012) call deafblindness a disability of access to information. Few
students who are considered to be deafblind have
total vision loss or total hearing loss, so in any environment they will be receiving some visual and
auditory information. However, without full access to the visual and auditory environment, the
information they gather may be distorted and incomplete (McInnes, 1999). With a background in
one loss or the other, educators can feel
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