Improving the National Infrastructure
for Students who are Deaf-Blind:
Intervener Services Initiative
Amy T. Parker, Peggy Malloy, D. Jay Gense
& John Killoran
National Center on Deaf-Blindness
Deaf-Blindness has long been recognized as an
extremely complex disability, not only because of
the barriers that children face in accessing the
world around them, but also because of the challenges it creates for educational systems. Over
the past several decades, intervener services
have become increasingly recognized as an important strategy for addressing these barriers and
challenges for many children. Their purpose is to
provide access to sensory information that would
otherwise be unavailable to individuals whose
hearing and vision are severely limited or absent.
Although people who are deaf-blind may benefit
from intervener services at any age and in any
setting, the growth of these services in the U.S.,
to date, has focused primarily on their use in promoting a child's learning and development in educational settings for students aged 3 through 21.
In educational settings, intervener services are
provided by an individual, typically a
paraeducator, who has received specialized
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