Shaurya Kshatri

Born deaf and with low vision, which progressively worsened as she got older, 25-year-old Siddhimaya Maharjan uses her hands to get her bearings in unfamiliar environments.

“To make sense and convey what the eyes and ears can’t detect, Siddhimaya excessively relies on touch and hand movements,” says her sister, Rushna Maharjan, Project Coordinator at Day Care Centre in Mid-Baneshwor, the only one of its kind in the capital catering to the deafblind individuals. Prior to the virus outbreak, Siddhimaya had access to daycare but the pandemic has limited her to the confines of her home. 
For individuals like Siddhimaya who have severe hearing and sight impairment, the scope of the outbreak and its new ‘physical distancing’ norm poses unique challenges to daily life. 

Pandemic Endangers Development
While her sister Rushna and her family assist her in the daily activities, the sudden lack of mobility has made her, along with numerous other deafblind individuals increasingly restless. 
Likewise, for 11-year-old Shin Sherpa, the pandemic has been particularly restrictive. With limited contact outside, he has been demonstrating immense frustrations, as per his father Lakhpa Nuru Sherpa, The Secretary-General of the Society of Deafblind Parents Nepal. “He hurts himself, bangs his head, and cries inconsolably,” states the worried parent.
Sherpa can hardly afford to avert his gaze away from his child, who suffered from both hearing and vision loss since birth. With infrequent routine medical checkups and children missing essential services, there has been a huge concern over the deafblind children and their mental and physical growth. Many parents worry that their children will begin forgetting important communication tactics if more time elapses without proper professional guidance. 
Namrata Nepal, the mother of five-year-old Nandini, fears for her child's well-being. Before COVID-19, she used to accompany her daughter to the Koshi Bahira Mahasangh and the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) Biratnagar for therapy sessions, all of which have now become impossible.
The National Resource Centre for deafness and blindness has been conducting online training for worried parents like Nepal. Likewise, the Koshi Association of The Deaf (KAD), Biratnagar has also switched online but Goma Karki, an educator for the deafblind has her reservations with online learning. “It can’t replicate the benefits of face-to-face communication, which has now forced parents to become tutors and facilitators,” she said. 
To give more time to their children, many parents have had to give up on their day jobs to stay back home and cater to the needs of their children – further putting them in financial strain. As social security allowance from the government, the differently-abled and their family receive Rs 3,000 and Rs 1,500 every month respectively, which as Sherpa points out, is hardly enough to even sustain necessities.

Without Access
Each person with deafness and blindness connects, communicates and experiences the world differently. Deafness and blindness is often misunderstood as a total loss of sight and hearing but it is not so.
Deafness blindness is a unique disability in Nepal, which was ensured by the Disability Rights Act 2017 and is reinforced by the Disability Right Regulation 2020 in Nepal. However, despite this, deafness and blindness continues to be widely misunderstood and misrepresented from both development and disability programs and perhaps nowhere is this exclusion more pronounced than in the education sector. Apart from a Daycare centre, a resource centre and community home-based support located in only three districts of Nepal (Kathmandu, Rupandehi and Morang), there aren’t any specific education facilities for people with such disabilities. 
For strong capable individuals like Sarita Lamichhane, who was born deaf, and is increasingly losing her eyesight, access to education has been an uphill battle. Pursuing her Master's degree in Nepali, Lamichhane has had to work 10 times harder than many people do, "Because there is not a special school for the people like me."
Like Lamichanne, each deafblind individual faces different levels of vision and hearing restrictions, and therefore education needs to ensure access to services that meet each of their needs and not a combination of services designed for blind or deaf people. 
Puspha Raj Rimal, President of DAN – Deafblind Association Nepal and elected board member of the World Federation of the Deafblind is a firm believer when it comes to special schools for the deafblind students. 
In the act prepared for the amendment and consolidation of the Rights of Person with Disability 2017, it is written that the government will make provision on inclusive teaching-learning and curriculum for children with deafness and blindness but the deafblind community is skeptic as to when it will come to fruition. 

No Trained Professionals
Moreover, there are no trained professional teachers and mobility instructors. Teachers like Karki are in short supply. They are funded and trained by Sense International, a global charity for deafness and blindness. 
But apart from these issues, the problem surrounding the deafblind populace goes deeper with their serious statistical invisibility in public records making a majority of the group unreachable. To further demonstrate this discrepancy, the 2011 Nepal census puts the number of deafblind at 9, 714 whereas the Sense International, on its website claims to address the needs of an estimated 570,000 people with mild forms of deafness and blindness and over 57,000 people with severe forms of deafness and blindness.
The Koshi resource centre only caters to 11 deafblind when it’s estimated that there are over 250 deafblind people in Morang alone, as per Karki. The Society of Deafblind Parents Nepal only has 15 members and the Day Care at Kathmandu has no more than nine children, which goes on to show how little of the deafblind population has actually been receiving what minimal services are available. 
The pandemic has lent a serious blow to the entire world, but for no one has the sense of isolation ran particularly deeper than among the deafblind community.

(Kshatri is freelance journalist)