To celebrate Deafblind Awareness Week, our Seashell Sensory team have crafted a series of blogs, delving into different aspects of understanding and supporting someone with deafblindness.
This blog, written by MSI Teacher, Claire Harrison explains the benefits of using Objects of Reference.
“Individuals who are deafblind use touch to access their world and those who have some functional vision and hearing it supports making sense of those interactions.
Deafblind learners use a total communication approach to ensure successful interactions and support conversations and exchanges of information. A combination of communication methods can be used such as speech, sign, gestures, symbols, photographs, objects of reference, text and electronic aids. A combination of these methods are used to reinforce each other giving greater meaning for the deafblind learner. Deafblind learners need to hear, see or feel gestures, objects, signs or words many times before they can understand receptively or use expressively.
Objects of Reference (OOR) are used to help deafblind learners, to understand what is being communicated to them; to anticipate a person, place, event or activity; to express themselves and to make choices. It is crucial that the OOR is relevant and meaningful to the learner so they can understand what it represents.
Understanding real objects is the first stage of developing symbolic development and this is the most concrete way to develop an understanding of a word. The objects used can be an armband to represent going swimming or a spoon to represent having something to eat. For the learner to have successful understanding of the Objects of Reference they need to be consistently be reinforced alongside the activity.
An example of how objects of reference can help deafblind learners is Aly’s story. Every week Aly goes shopping and she had a ‘prep for learning box’ with objects related to her shopping activity. She would explore each item coactively with her Intervenor before going shopping. This supported her to prepare for the shopping activity. Her Intervenor observed her interest with the shopping bag each week. This has now turned into her Object Cue for the activity. Now Aly is given the shopping bag and this prepares for her visit to the shops.”
What’s an Intervenor?
An intervener is a person who regularly works one-to-one with an individual who is deaf-blind. Deafblindness is a low incidence disability that describes individuals with varying degrees of vision and hearing losses.
