Masked People with 'impaired abilities' struggle to communicate

New Delhi

It is difficult to both understand and be understood with the masks, a critical measure to ward off COVID-19, posing a formidable communications barrier and adding another layer of complication to the lives of those who don’t use words. They take – and give -- cues from facial expressions and lip reading.

“Sign language is not simply hand gestures but a combination of hand movements, facial expressions and body language,” Anuj Jain, executive director of the National Association for the Deaf, told PTI through an interpreter.

Describing the ‘mask times’ as a challenge, he said, “At this time, communicating online is the best way. But when we have to interact face to face, we do have to take off the masks.”

According to the 2011 Indian census, there are 1.3 million people with “hearing impairment”.

However, a spokesperson for the Association of Sign Language Interpreters estimates that 18 million people have speech and hearing disabilities.

With everyone donning masks in public spaces and governments penalising those who don’t do so, there is no end to the problems faced by speech and hearing impaired people, said Gyanendra Purohit, director of the Indore-based Anand Service Society. “People with hearing and speech disabilities rely on lip reading and facial expressions, especially when they are communicating with able-bodied persons,” he explained.

It was because of this inability to communicate that several people were left stranded thousands of kilometres from home as India went under lockdown on March 25.

After reading a PTI news story in March about 10 speech and hearing disabled persons being stuck in Gurgaon, Purohit and his wife Monica, both sign language experts, started an online campaign to connect with more such people.

“With the help of the government we have managed to send over 350 deaf and mute people to their homes. We have been in touch with them through video calls,” he added.

Some beginnings are being made to accommodate the special needs of the community.

Training and awareness of the essential workers, creative experiments with facial masks, and cochlear implants in the longer run are some of the suggestions. And while masks of all kinds and all price ranges have flooded markets in India, transparent masks are yet to make their presence felt in any significant way.

“In order to enable these hearing impaired people to function normally, many people have suggested the device of transparent masks. Also, the field of otolaryngology (study of diseases of ears and throat) has taken leaps of great development in order to rehabilitate the deaf population, in the way of the cochlear implant programme,” said Aparna Mahajan, consultant-ENT, Fortis Escorts Hospital.