By Annmaree Watharow and Skye Wallace We have travelled to Perth to do a number of multi-purpose activities: Interviews Skye and I spent time with amazing consumers to get their insights on what deafblind or dual sensory impaired people and their families need and want. This information is then used to inform our partnerships, research programs and awareness raising and …
Author: Anmmaree Watharow
Save Sight Institute Family Day – Part 3: Social-Haptic Communication Workshop Notes
Annmaree Watharow and Susannah McNally People have been using on-body touch signals for centuries. Most people use touch and gestures, for example, to signify support (patting on the back), and love (holding hands, kissing). People with disability and their families have sometimes created individual systems when sight, hearing or speaking senses are not working well enough for them to ‘know …
Save Sight Institute Family Day – Part 2: Being Prepared for Hospital
Annmaree Watharow and Susannah McNally So, we have our super team in place (see part one). What else do we need to have a better health or hospital experience? We need lots of systemic and attitudinal changes, but we can help ourselves (and our health caregivers) by being prepared. In order to be better prepared for hospital and healthcare encounters, …
Save Sight Institute Family Day – Part 1: Transitions and Super Teams
Annmaree Watharow and Susannah McNally We are here at the Save Sight Institute Family Day as part of our mission with the Dual Sensory Impairment Project to consolidate partnerships and raise awareness of the issues impacting people and families living with sensory impairments. Our brief today is twofold: a presentation of managing transitions from children’s health care services to adult …
Developing a consumer and carer handbook – We need your input!
We are developing a consumer and carer handbook for older people living with dual sensory impairment. Please fill out our survey to help up gain insights that will inform the design of a consumer and carers handbook for people with combined vision and hearing loss. We are seeking input directly from people with combined hearing and vision loss (or dual …
A Report from The United Kingdom
Usher syndrome is the most common cause of deafblindness in people under 65 years of age, accounting for around fifty percent. In most cases, Usher syndrome is the combination of congenital deafness and acquired low vision that degenerates over time. It may be associated with balance disorders and cataracts. The hearing loss is usually stable, but subtypes have been identified …
A Report from Spain
I am in Spain in a town by the Balearic Sea. Not for recreation but for intense work on a new core set for deafblindness in the International Classification of Function (ICF). There’s a beach outside, a waterslide too, and even a roller coaster. But we are inside focused on deciding and debating what features of deafblindness or dual sensory …
Book Review – True Biz
Sara Novic, Penguin Random House, 2022 pp ISBN 9780593241509 Through a blend of fiction and creative non-fiction Sara Novic has crafted an urgent and compelling lament of the demise of culturally important Deaf education In America. The fiction takes readers into the pleasures and pains of Deaf communities and outliers, whilst the non-fiction unwraps some mysteries of American sign language …
Book Review – Disrupting the academy with lived experience-led knowledge
Maree Higgins and Caroline Lenette (eds) Policy Press, Bristol, 2024 pp 194ISBN: 9781447366348 (pbk) Expert-knowers write chapters in this work, challenging academic norms, while providing potent examples of lived experience-led research. The epistemic justice framing in which lived experiences are prioritised and honoured, entwines with social justice. As Estelle Keerthana Ramaswamy notes: ‘Authors should declare their positionality in their research and writing …
Seeing things that aren’t there
Last week Annmaree and Suzie travelled to Newcastle to talk on “seeing things that aren’t there” or visual hallucinations, often called Charles Bonnet syndrome. “Seeing things that aren’t there”, that no one else can see and that are called visual hallucinations. “Seeing things that aren’t there” is very common in people with problems seeing well. Deafblind people “see things that …