Emily Macklin, Neha Sharma, & Amber Skerry: Supporting Communication for Deafblind Students

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Emily Macklin, Neha Sharma, Amber Skerry, three SLPs working with the deafblind population at Perkins School for the Blind! They share a wealth of information about working with deafblind students, including how sensory impairment influences their incidental learning, the importance of trial and error in teaching language, the different ways deafblind students use AAC, and more!

Before the episode, Rachel shares about a client who uses Read & Write for Chrome. Some school team members felt assistive technology was a “crutch”. until Rachel and the client made a story together using the Read & Write that convinced them was an important tool!

Key ideas this week:

🔑 Deafblindness doesn’t mean completely deaf and blind - it usually involves varying degrees of loss in both senses.

🔑 Teachers of deaf blind children design learning experiences to teach students about things on a deeper, more experiential level, such as teaching about apples by climbing an apple tree, cutting an apple, and planting the seeds.

🔑 You don’t want to be a “fairly godmother” for a deafblind student, where objects appear and disappear as you give them items and take them away. There needs to be a connection for the student between the object, where you get the item, and where you put it when done, e.g. a “finished” bucket.

🔑 Some deafblind students use a ProxTalker midtech device that allows a user to place any photo, symbol, or object on a sound tag card. Users place the sound tag card on any one of the buttons and push to trigger voice output!

Links from this episode:

Project Core - 3D Symbols https://www.project-core.com/3d-symbols/

Tactile Connections: Symbols for Communication

https://www.aph.org/product/tactile-connections-symbols-for-communication/

Tactile Symbol Library: https://www.tsbvi.edu/campus-resources/accessibility/tactile-symbols-library

DeafBlind International: https://www.deafblindinternational.org/

Active Learning Space: https://activelearningspace.org/

Guest Email addresses: emily.macklin@perkins.org, amber.skerry@perkins.org, and neha.sharma@perkins.org