Abstract
At first sight one might think that deafblindness could be determined in a rather straightforward way by objective criteria, e.g., by medical vision and hearing tests. Reality - for most people, who are familiar with deafblindness - as we know, is not like that. But then, what is deafblindenss? The following short article describes how deafblindness can be understood as a social construction - or maybe rather social practice or a special culture. The message of the article is that we, in our work of improving the offers to deafblind people, may benefit from being aware of the social construction of deafblindness. Being identified as a deafblind person is a matter of "being able to belong to a deafblind culture", rather than being a matter of identifying a combined vision and hearing loss. The Nordic pedagogics of the deafblindness implies a "subjectivation of the deafblind person as a deafblind person" rather than a compensation for missing vision and hearing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | NUD News Bulletin |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 12-15 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Publication status | Published - 2007 |