Re: Working with visually impaired students--multiple responses

From: Lois Siegel <[email protected]>

>  About deaf people and music: I remember reading that Helen Keller used to
> go to concerts and could "hear" the music by holding on to the wooden
> back of the chair in front of her. She was feeling the vibrations, which
> would have been more pronounced in the concert hall that those produced
> by a recording.  I wonder if earphones might be useful in this way?

I think it depends on the condition of the individual.  I had a young friend
- 10 -year-old who was deaf.   He could feel the vibrations of someone
approaching my apartment way before I knew anyone was coming. He was very
sensitive to vibrations.

But he was sensing vibrations, not sound. He didn't know what sound was.  He
didn't know that objects make sounds.

Lois
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From: Woodson, Mary Beth <[email protected]>

If possible, I would suggest allowing the screen the film with someone who
can act as either a describer and/or read the subtitles. (Since the talking
may be a hindrance to sighted student this might work better as a separate
screening. Or have the student view the film with the class and, if needed,
watch it a second time.) Depending on the type and severity of impairment,
would the student benefit from sitting closer and to the side (if, for
example, they have some peripheral vision as in some forms of macular
degeneration)? For further suggestions you might want to contact VI
specific groups; or, as you're in Florida, you might want to contact the
Florida Center for the Blind (www.flblind.org).

Best,
Mary Beth Woodson

******************************
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Mary Beth Woodson
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Film & Media Studies
Program Assistant, Center for Teaching Excellence
University of Kansas
[email protected]
*****
From: Lesley Speed <[email protected]>

Vision impaired people can definitely get a lot out of movies and can also
make good contributions to discussions and teaching situations.

Once I gave a guest lecture about Chaplin's Modern Times in a course that
was predominantly about literature and in which one student was completely
blind. During the screening, the student had someone describing the film to
her. This seems to have been quite effective because when I referred to the
feeder scene during my lecture, the student who is blind was laughing quite
loudly (and it's not that my lecture was particularly funny).

I know various vision impaired people who go to the movies, often with an
audio describer, depending on the degree of their vision impairment. Vision
impaired people also refer to having "seen" films, in reference to the fact
that this is how the social ritual of going to the movies is described,
even if some of these people do not literally see. In a social conversation
I had with a man who is pretty much completely blind, he made some comments
to me about reviews of a recent film that he had seen. I've forgotten what
the film was, but he referred to some criticism of the editing that he
considered to be beside the point of the film. I realised that this was one
of the few times that I've been in a conversation with a person with no
training in film analysis who was able to talk about the 180 degree rule -
and this man is vision impaired. People's interests can be very broad and
deep and sometimes most interesting discussions can happen in the most
unexpected situations.

Another thought that I've had about the possibility of teaching film to the
vision impaired, though I've never had a chance to try this out, is that
it's an opportunity to give close attention to the use of sound in films.
It's an aspect of films that could be considered more closely and more
often anyway, and our digital society is a very aural one as well as a very
visual one.

Lesley Speed