I have always naturally been very interested in the way deaf-blind people communicate. I have heard about Helen Keller, but never understood how she communicated until now. Tadoma is used by deaf-blind people to properly communicate. In Tadoma, the deaf-blind individual places their hand on the talker’s face and tries to accurately interpret what they are saying. Most Tadoma users place their hands on the lips of the talker while some place their hand on the chin and cheek of the talker. The hand placement comes down to experience and comfort for the Tadoma-user. In the video, you can see, deaf-blind individual David Geyer places his hands on the lips and cheeks of the talker. To answer the talker, he then places his hands on his own lips and chin to ensure he is making the right movements with his lips and is conveying what he wants to say. The article attached speaks about how research proves that the performance of this technique “is roughly equivalent to that of normals listening in noise or babble with a signal-to-noise ratio in the range 0-6 dB.” Following lip and jaw movement, airflow, and vibrations can help users of Tadoma communicate very efficiently, almost as efficiently as normals.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3973218/
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Hi Kayla!
ReplyDeleteI love how you discussed Tadoma because this is just another example in the book of how amazing people are and how they can adapt to any situation. I have never actually seen someone who is deaf/blind communicate this way and had never heard of this method before reading about it in the book. It must take a long time for people to learn this skill and begin to communicated accurately.
Kayla,
ReplyDeleteI find it really interesting how blind and deaf people communicate. Tadoma users really show how capable you are of using your surroundings. This video really gives me an insight on how this works. Really cool information and video!
You are very right, the Helen Keller story is a great example and really shows how intelligent human beings are even without sight or hearing. This really brings a lot of light towards how strong our senses are. For obvious reasons our sense of touch is extremely valuable in our every day lives and this video shows why.
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