Informing that according to World Health Organisation, over 90 per cent deaf children are born to normal parents, William Borneo, Programme Coordinator for India and Bangladesh, international non-governmental organsation Deafchild, said a family faces tremendous difficulty in interacting with their deaf children.
Addressing presspersons here on Monday organised by the Association for People with Disabilities (APD), an NGO working for disabled persons, he said that in the absence of proper guidance to children and counselling to their parents, deaf children often feel neglected by society owing to absence of communication.
“Though it is a global phenomenon, the problem is more prevalent in developing countries such as India. Illiteracy among parents is one of the main reasons for the problem, mainly in rural areas,” Mr. Borneo said.
He said that all over the world NGOs working for hearing impaired children were trying to find the best possible solution to bridge this gap, by increasing communication skills between normal people and the deaf children.
In her address, Soumya, a hearing impaired girl working as role model for APD said that during her childhood, she faced great difficulty in getting admitted to school because most of the schools refused to admit her.
Ms. Soumya, whose was interacting in sign language, which was being translated by one of her colleagues, said that it was important that the teachers should be first trained in handling deaf children in schools.
