A few years ago, deaf students of the National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH) in Thiruvananthapuram won a quiz competition against 'hearing' students (those who are not hearing impaired) of the same institute. It happened because a teacher had begun presenting the news of what’s happening around the world to the deaf students every day at lunch break.
On March 27, she restarted the practice that broke away a year ago. This time, she began telling them news about the COVID-19 pandemic, updates about the dreaded disease that’s put the whole world under lockdown.
Silvy Maxi Mena, the English lecturer at NISH who went to all the trouble, says that the students had otherwise no way of knowing the guidelines of what to do and not to do during the lockdown. “They don’t know the guidelines – about carrying affidavits if they step out and not being allowed to go out in twos and threes etc. In some cases their parents may also have hearing disability and may be unaware. The sign language interpreters of news channels also could not go to work because of the lockdown. That’s when I thought we could restart the news videos. I asked the permission of Sheeba George, NISH’s executive director who’s also Director of the Social Justice Department. She said it’s good, only keep the news authentic,” says Silvy.
Silvy prepared the material to be presented every day. At the end of every video, she would repeat the precautions to be observed during the pandemic – as social distancing, washing hands and covering mouth while coughing or sneezing.
Her college going daughter Kripa would shoot the video of Silvy presenting the news on phone and sent it off in bits and pieces to Vinayachandran, sign language interpreter. He would do the sign language presentation, edit both Silvy's and his videos and send it to NISH’s system admin Shaji SV to upload it on the official website - www.nish.ac.in.
“I stay at a place where the internet connectivity is very patchy. So Kripa sends it as two-minute clips to Vinayachandran. We somehow make it happen every day so the students are not left behind,” Silvy says.
She would also get the studentst to write the news they understood in English and send it to her, which she'd then correct.
Four years ago, she began the practice of making small video presentations of daily news for students with speech and hearing disability at NISH. “They don’t under newspapers because of language deficiency and mostly look only at the pictures. As an English teacher, I felt that they would not be able to write their papers if they didn’t have any idea of what’s happening around the world. That’s how I started the practice of taking some time off at lunch break and shooting small videos conveying the important events in the state, the nation and the world.”
She went on for three years. After that, she made a project proposal to have a news studio in the campus and the government had approved it too. The news could then be presented by the students too. “It was a week before the studio was to be functional that the coronovirus spread began and we went into a lockdown,” Silvy says.
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