Last year, civil society organisation Nodo Tau provided training to a group of young deaf-mutes at the free software based community computer telecentre that is available at its headquarters. A telecentre is a space that provides a community open access to technologies. Trainings are also held at these locations on the use of these technologies so neighbours can use them to resolve problems and improve their community.
During the training, technology was offered as yet another tool that favours communication and is useful to the issues of the deaf community itself.
It is the first time that Nodo Tau goes through an experience of this nature. Nodo Tau coordinates a network of nine telecentres in the peripheral neighbourhoods of Rosario and Grand Rosario, Argentina, and foresees the incorporation of more community locations of this type during 2006.
One of the telecentre coordinators, María Victoria Escobar, was in charge of carrying out this workshop alongside educators specialised in sign language. In this article, they inform us of their first approach towards ICT training aimed at deaf-mutes.
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“The world is for those that can hear,” say the young people who attended the computer trainings we held at the Nodo Tau Free Telecentre for the last year.
In their case, the fact that the world is for those that can hear, somewhat entails the need to come up with daily strategies to survive in the city where they live.
From going to the supermarket to watching TV, from going to the doctor
because of a stomach ache to being able to study at secondary school:
everything is a great challenge for them. It turns out that Jeremías,
Javier, Mariano, Emanuel and Fernando are young deaf-mutes who also have the questions and conflicts typical of adolescence. They came into contact with Nodo Tau through their teacher Analía Gomítolo, an educator specialised in sign language, who researched their concerns and got in touch with us so we could add them to the groups that receive our training.
Undoubtedly, it was also a very novel and motivating experience, as it is the first time that we work with people with different disabilities.
In this particular case involving deaf-mute individuals, we also had to
overcome communication and expression barriers. That was possible thanks to the constant interpretation of the educator that accompanied the daily process at the telecentre.
During the workshop, the young people learned to use text processors, to typeset, underline words, add colours, images, organise ideas in tables… and since in our organisation we tend to prefer to not limit ourselves to technical procedures, but to also build knowledge that will contribute to the daily lives of people through reflection and dialogue, these technological tools were the excuse for it.
Through participative dynamics and procedures, we discovered and were able to discuss the workplace concerns that these young people encounter. If the outlook is a little hopeless or bleak for young people in general, it is even more so for young people with different skills. There are not always policies that integrate and protect the rights of the more vulnerable.
Therefore, after a few trainings, and many more mates [special tea beverage consumed in the southern cone], they told us about the efforts and forms that they had to fill out to be allowed access to secondary public schools and for the government to assume responsibility of assigning them an interpreter for every class hour. We became aware of the impossibility to communicate with the doctor at a hospital when sick, unless they have the support of their relatives or some interpreter friend to accompany them as a favour.
Thanks to the internet and the support of the specialised educator, they were able to find out about the legislation that exists in other countries regarding these cases that are so important for the life and development of a person. They also researched subtitles on TV that they “read” through written text of each of the words and sounds that appears in the screen (closed captioning for the hearing impaired) and how these codified signals are legislated in foreign countries.
The computer training gradually advanced and in our search for new ways to communicate, we began to investigate vectorial design programmes. This, as the students later confessed, was the most amusing platform available to help develop a sense of ownership of the tools that they use to express what they think.
We concluded the year with the promise of meeting again in 2006 and that is what we are working on now. We are trying to add new participants, adapt specialised educational material, and plan content and methodologies. In short, we are learning from previous experiences to improve upon them and are, of course, receptive to the stories and shared knowledge of similar experiences in other places.
Without a doubt, the challenges these young people face are many.
Nevertheless, if we conceive the communicative act, as not only articulating sounds that form words, but also as a total charged with meaning and purpose that is often designed in a context or under certain modulations or intentions, we will understand that the challenge for them and us as well is, in reality, greater than what we think.
Perhaps technologies can be among the tools that they can use to communicate and be understood. However, there is no doubt that the most important factor is to provide support, foster human values, solidarity, and seek the justice of laws that unite rather than divide. Only then can their affirmation “The world is for those who hear,” evolve into the sentence of the brilliant Paulo Freire: “The world is not. It is being (made)…”
