Tell It!
How can you make your own choices when you cannot see or hear well? For individuals with congenital deafblindness, this is not self-evident. They often depend on others to access information and express their needs and preferences. Yet, having influence over one’s own life is essential for personal development.
This dissertation explores how autonomy, communication, and language development can be strengthened in people with congenital deafblindness. The starting point is that autonomy does not exist in isolation but develops through interactions with others. Communication partners, including parents, teachers, and support staff, therefore play an important role.
To address this, we developed a new video-feedback intervention, Influencing Communication & Language (IC&L). In this intervention, communication partners, together with communication coaches, review video recordings of their interactions and learn how to better respond to the signals, initiatives, and preferences of the person with deafblindness. The study also examined whether communication coaches delivered the intervention as intended.
The findings show that communication partners used strategies supporting autonomy, communication, and language development more frequently after participating in the intervention. Participants with congenital deafblindness also showed small improvements in these areas. Overall, the intervention proved to be feasible in practice, while also identifying components that require additional attention during implementation.
This research demonstrates that autonomy, communication, and language are closely interconnected. By addressing these domains in an integrated way, more opportunities can be created for individuals with congenital deafblindness to participate actively in the world around them and experience greater control over their own lives.