Division on Visual Impairments

DVI Quarterly Volume 59(1)

A quarterly newsletter from the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Visual Impairments containing practitioner tips for Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments, Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialists, and other professionals.

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34 implant technology have increased the amount and quality of what individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing are able to hear (Dowell, Blamey, and Clark, 1995). Given these advances, we sought to determine if a student who is deaf-blind with a cochlear implant could learn to use a mobility device which relied on sound cues like the K -Sonar. For this foray into teaching a student who is deafblind with a cochlear implant to use the K-Sonar, we selected an 18-year-old, male student who only had light perception and used a cochlear implant in one ear and a hearing aid in the other. Our first step in this process was to make sure the student was a viable candidate for learning to use the K-Sonar device. Most importantly, we wanted to know if the student could hear the sounds emitted by the K-Sonar. We gave the student three tests to determine if he could hear the sounds emitted by the device. For the first test, the student told us when he heard the device emit any sound at all. For the second test, we had him identify when the frequency modulations, which indicate distance setting, changed. For the third test, we had him indicate changes in the pitch of the sound emitted by the K-Sonar. The student passed all three tests with 100% accuracy. With the aid of his cochlear implant, he was able to accurately hear and perceive the K-Sonar. This alone was big news! Previously, the only viable population for this device was believed to be individuals with typical hearing. Furthermore, the student may have been more accurate at describing the qualities of the

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