The Association of Parents and Friends of the Deaf, from the Province of Cuenca (ASPAS), which brings together some 60 families, has had to reinvent its activity to continue offering, during confinement, the services it usually provides in speech therapy, family care and counseling to its associates, which now online.
“We are in constant contact with the families so that the kids continue to have their rehabilitation,” explains the president of ASPAS, María José Mondejar, who recognizes that at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak they had to stop because the families also had to adapt to the situation according to their personal circumstances, but now the group has already resumed the activity.
“The speech therapy service continues to function normally, within what the situation allows,” he points out. Thus, the speech therapist connects with older children and adults through platforms such as Skype or Zoom to guide them in rehabilitation.
In the case of the early care service, which cares for the youngest children, close contact is made with families, to whom materials and guidelines are sent so that they can work from home.
Mondéjar specifies that the ASPAS early care service serves a dozen children up to the age of six. In addition, the group also advises about 30 users from that age.
The pandemic has also brought another consequence for people with hearing disabilities since the face masks prevent them from being able to read lips, which becomes a real barrier to communication.
As a solution to this problem, an initiative was born to develop masks with a transparent part to facilitate lips reading for people with hearing disability, but Mondéjar stresses that it has not been proven that this design offers all the guarantees against contagion. “They have to be is safe in the first place,” he recalls, insisting that they are not recommended.
In addition to the masks, the screens on the counters in the establishments will also make “communication very difficult for deaf people”. “Ideally, magnetic loops should be installed, as there were previously in some supermarkets, banks and public institutions such as the National Police or the Government Office,” she requests.
