Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Exceptional Children: blindness and deafness

We covered blindness (and other vision impairments) and deafness (and lesser forms of hearing loss) in class tonight.

[Speaking of which, the old question "would you rather be deaf or blind" came up the other night at the bar with 74 and Friar, and as in this post, I said I'd probably rather be blind, because I can always listen to books on tape as well as music. And 74 said, "Yes, but if I were blind, I wouldn't be able to watch porn."]

Fascinating factlings:
- 25% of students who are deaf or who have another form of hearing loss (about 83 out of 1000 students!) have another disability as well.
- almost half of students with visual impairments (2 out of 1000) have another disability as well.

I learned a new word. "Adventitious," in medicine, means not innate, coming from an external source, acquired. As in congenital vs. adventitious hearing loss.

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