Deaf-Blindness

A person is deaf-blind when he suffers from a severe combined sight and hearing impairment.

Some deaf-blind people are completely deaf and blind, while others still have a part of their sight and/or hearing. Deaf-blindness has different causes like heredity, injuries at birth, accidents, eye and ear sicknesses and old age as some examples.
Deaf-blindness is a self-contained handicap. Deaf-blind people cannot compensate for the loss of one sense with the other, which blind and deaf people have the possibility to do. Therefore deaf-blind people cannot benefit from the arrangements made for blind people, visually impaired, deaf people and hearing impaired. Deaf-blind people need special assistive technology and methods to communicate and to manage the every day life.

What problems do deaf-blind people experience

Deaf-blindness entails extreme difficulties in connection with schooling, further studying, work, family and social life, and a great deal of deaf-blind people is also excluded from crucial information about/from the society and from cooperating in cultural activities.

Deaf-blind people especially have problems in getting information, communicating and orientating in the surroundings. Deaf-blind people are completely or partly cut off from getting their fundamental existential need like closeness, contact and safety. This is why deaf-blind people often experience isolation if there is not made specific arrangements.

It is important that deaf-blind people are put interpreters, contact persons and modern technology at their disposal. These and other focus areas put together can help deaf-blind people to function in a modern society. There is no shortage of the zest for life among deaf-blind people, but the need for the necessary help is still a factor.

Deaf-Blind people can be divided into two main groups:
1.    people who is born deaf-blind
2.    and people who has become deaf-blind.
-    the last group can once more be divided into other subgroups who are all represented by the Danish Association of the DeafBlind. These groups are: people who are primarily deaf or hearing impaired, where the sight fails later in life; people who are primarily blind or visually impaired, where the hearing fails later in life; and then there is people starting out with normal hearing and sight, where both the sight and the hearing get severely reduced later on. 

Deaf-Blind people in Denmark

The Danish Association of the DeafBlind estimates that every year about 50  Danes can be grouped under the Nordic definition of people living with deaf-blindness. New studies show that it is possible that the amount of deaf-blind people is greater then earlier estimated. The lack of identifying deaf-blind people is a problem, because the Danish Association of the DeafBlind cannot help if a handicapped person is not recognised as being deaf-blind.

In Denmark there are no precise records of the amount of deaf-blind people because there is no nation wide survey, but a demographic survey of adults who had become deaf-blind later in life showed that there are about 1.250 deaf-blind people in Denmark. The nursing home residents are not included in this survey, so because of the lacking identification of deaf-blind people a more realistic amount is much higher.