COMMUNICATION SKILL
FOR VISUALLY
IMPAIRED 678
ANILA INAM
Simplifying a Complex Skill
• As the parent of a blind toddler, at some point, you will be asked about
how their communication skills are developing. As you respond to this
question, more than likely, you will think about several different skills.
• Is my child talking yet?
• How big is my child’s vocabulary?
• Does my child follow simple directions?
• How many different sounds does my child say correctly?
• In the toddler and preschool years, these are key skills to consider. You
may be reading this because your blind child is older and still not talking
or shows delays in understanding and communicating what he wants or
needs. While the following information focuses on early development in
the first two years, it might help you talk to others in more detail about
your expectations and hopes for your child.
The Impact of Blindness on Developing
Communication Skills
• Babies use all of their senses to experience and explore
their world and to develop new skills. The new areas of
development include:
• cognition,
• motor,
• social,
• self-help,
• and communication skills.
• When one or more of a child’s senses is impaired,
developmental delays or differences tend to be
expected. The sense of hearing might be considered the
most important for the development of spoken
language. However, deaf and hearing impaired children
learn to communicate using different methods of
“input” and “output.” And, if you have a deaf/blind
child, there are specific methods of teaching
communication using touch. When a child is born blind
(congenital blindness) or is diagnosed with visual
impairment within the first two years of life, their
communication skills will be closely monitored as along
with other developmental skills
• Research from the 50s, 60s, and 70s indicated that
parents of visually impaired children could expect to see
delays in communication development. It cannot be
denied that vision plays an important role in the
development of communication skills in sighted
children. Recent research, however, suggests that the
absence of sight does not automatically mean your
child will have language and speech delays. Individual
differences are likely, and the patterns of development
will also depend upon whether your child is diagnosed
with additional disabilities.
What Is Communication?
• The purpose of this article is to break down the fairly
complex skill of communication into the different “sub-
skills.” Communication consists of four different
developmental areas or skill sets:
• Receptive language
• Expressive language
• Pragmatic language (social communication)
• Speech
• There are other developmental skills that serve as a
foundation for the development of communication.
These include cognition, motor, and social skills. Your
child is building other skill areas, but those three are
closely related to communication development.
• While we may try to simplify communication by dividing
up and defining the separate skills, the reality is that
the different skills “blend together” to create successful
communication interactions.
Receptive Language
• Receptive language is also called language
comprehension. The essence of this skill might be
described as learning that when speech sounds are
combined, they have meaning. The words stand in for,
or are symbols for, all the seen and “unseen” entities in
our world. Those entities include those we can see (or
touch) and include objects, people, animals, and
actions. It is easier to just call these entities “things” in
our world.
Contd
• There are also entities in our world that are unseen or
abstract. We have thoughts about them and form what
are called “concepts” in our mind. Emotions are the
most familiar “unseen” labels in our vocabulary. Another
example might be a relationship term like “brother.” We
learn the concept of a brother, but we can use the word
without having a “thing” in front of us. We also create
concepts that compare other things such as “big” or
“pretty.” These might be a visual concept, but they can
also refer to our own experiences and perceptions.
• When words are combined, then meaning expands.
During the formative language years, children learn
many single words and their meanings as separate
things. When you use two or more words during daily
activities, you are helping your child understand those
expanded meanings. Phrases and simple sentences will
follow these simple word combinations as your child’s
receptive language develops. Typically, a child
understands individual words and word combinations
before they can produce them themselves.
• For example:
“Mommy…” “Mommy’s home.”
“Cookie…” “More cookie.”
“Up…” “Pick you up.”
“Coat…” “Put on coat.”
“Go…” “Go to park.”
• As a child reaches school age, reading language in print
(including braille) is also considered comprehension of
meaning. Symbols can provide another form of
meaning, including sign language and visual symbols
like pictures.
Expressive Language
• Once a child understands that words have meaning, they begin
to use those words themselves to communicate meaning. The
essence of this skill is sharing meaning with others by talking
about objects, people, actions, and interactions in their world.
They can also begin to talk about things that are not present
and about events in the past and future.
• Expressive communication actually begins at
the nonverbal level and includes non-speech sounds, speech-
like sounds (cooing and babbling and jargon), and gestures.
Verbal language begins with first words, and then two or more
words are combined. Later in the preschool years, words are
combined into sentences.
• As a child reaches school age, they express meaning
through writing (including braille). Meaning can also be
expressed through sign language or visual symbols. The
reasons for using expressive language fall under the
area of pragmatic language, which is described in the
next section.
Pragmatic Language
• Pragmatic language is also called social communication or
language use. The essence of this skill might be considered
sharing meaning (expressive language) with another person to
accomplish something.
• For example, we communicate to let others know what we want
or what we need. Communication requires social engagement,
or it is just considered “talking.” It initially involves several
“steps” that are social in nature. These include:
• Gaining someone’s attention
• Engaging them in an interaction
• Maintaining that interaction until you are finished
• A variety of nonverbal behaviors are involved in these
steps, including:
• Orienting towards and looking at faces
• Shifting eye gaze
• Using gestures and body language
• Changing facial expression
• As adults, we also communicate for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes it’s just to pass the time, share experiences,
enjoy our friends, or share our feelings. Throughout the
day, however, we usually have a purpose in mind. There
are different types of what are called communicative
functions that children learn and use throughout the day
that are similar to having a purpose. They include
managing the behavior of others (getting them to do
what you want or stop doing something), engaging
socially (person to person), and sharing joint attention
(person to person and including an object or event).
• You might be familiar with the labels of typical
communicative functions:
• Requesting
• Protesting
• Rejecting
• Commenting
• As a child grows, more complex functions like inviting,
negotiating, and disagreeing will develop
• Social skill development was mentioned as one of the
core foundational skills related to communication
development. It is sometimes difficult to separate out
what is a social skill and what is a communication skill
when we consider pragmatic language development.
The concept of joint attention is one of the most
important skills that are required for the development of
receptive and expressive and pragmatic language skills:
• Talking about something that is experienced by you and
your child at the same time is how meaning is
developed.
• Talking about something that you both notice or that
your child wants you to notice is how a social
commenting is developed.
• And later, talking about an event or an experience that
you or your child had in the past or will have in the
future is how social conversations develop.
Speech
• Speech is often referred to as articulation. Learning to
speak combines hearing and processing sounds,
imitating and then producing sounds, and combining
sounds into words. There are three physical processes
that are combined to produce oral speech:
• Articulating sounds (consonants and vowels) using the
mouth (lips, teeth, tongue, jaw, and palate)
• Vocalizing by moving air from the lungs and past the
vocal chords
• Coordinating sounds and voice to produce words which
are then combined and spoken in a rhythmic manner
that is referred to as fluency
• There are developmental stages for speech just as there are for
language. Early forms of expressive language including cooing,
babbling, and jargon represent your child’s exploration of sound,
voice, and articulation. Once they begin to combine sounds
(consonants and vowels) into words, there are age ranges when
we expect specific sounds to develop. For example, words with
the sounds “m” or “b” will be expected earlier than more
complex sounds such as “l” or “r” or “ch,” and sequences of
sounds such as “mama” or “uh oh” are easier than “ball,”
“cookie,” “banana,” “slide,” or “vegetable.” Young children
substitute easier sounds for more difficult sounds and may leave
out certain sounds. All of these differences are expected during
the first three years of development
• Some children might use nonverbal means of “talking,”
including sign language or pictures or even devices that
produce the speech after words are selected by
touching pictures or a series of pictures.
FamilyConnect’s article
“Augmentative and Alternative Communication” has
more information on nonverbal communication.
How to communicate with VIC
1.Make sure the child knows of your presence. ...
2.Always use the child's name. ...
3.Tell the child when you are leaving. ...
4.Touch for attention if necessary. ...
5.Speak clearly. ...
6.Give verbal warnings. ...
7.Offer clear descriptions. ...
8.Explaining situations
• Speak directly to the person not through a companion, guide, or
other individual.
• Speak to the person using a natural conversational tone and
speed.
• Do not speak loudly and slowly unless the person also has a
hearing impairment.
• Address the person by name when possible.
• There are various different methods of communication.
• This includes verbal communication, non-verbal
communication, listening, written communication and
visual communication.
• Research has shown that non-verbal cues and body language,
facial expressions and tone of voice account for almost 55% of
all communication.
• What are some common communication methods that deaf-
blind people use?
• Deaf-blind people use many different ways to communicate.
• They use sign language (adapted to fit their visual field),
tactile sign language, tracking, tactile fingerspelling, print
on palm, tadoma, Braille, speech, and speech reading
