By Petro Mkandawire

Blantyre, Mana: Board Chairperson for the Malawi National Association of the Deaf (MANAD), Robert Mbendera on Thursday said adapted and digital Malawian sign language books will help to mitigate challenges that deaf people face in the education sector.

Mbendera was speaking at MANAD offices in Blantyre during the launch of “All Children Reading” project through a press conference which was aimed at improving education levels of deaf people by strengthening means of accessing reading materials in Malawian Sign Language (MSL).

He said they want to ensure that deaf children have access to quality education through digital books which will help in social inclusion; whereby, teachers and parents alike will be able to learn how to communicate with deaf people through these digital books.

“Deaf children have access to education materials that have been made in their own format if we are to improve education levels. So, this project will help to eradicate problems that these children face in different schools,” said Mbendera.

Mbendera added that communication between teachers and children is the most challenging issue such that the project will train teachers on how to access content which has been loaded in the digital books and the organisation will be training parents at home as well.

The project will run for seven months targeting six specialized deaf schools, special needs education teachers, parents of deaf children and ECD caregivers, whereby the books will be in video and audio format as well as 50 printed books will be distributed.

Speaking earlier, Chief Education Officer responsible for Inclusive Education, Peter Msendema said the supplementary books are part of the response on the challenges that deaf people face since they affect levels of education in the country, adding that government will make sure they work hand in hand with MANAD to address the challenges.

“The ministry will take part in training teachers to ensure we have adequate special needs teachers, train parents in sign language and also encourage establishment of clubs in schools in order to equip both teachers and learners with sign language skills for better communication,” said Msendema. Msendema added that the ministry has created inclusive education whereby they want to ensure that sign language is a medium for communication and that the ministry will also introduce a sign language course which will help to equip people with sign language for easy communication.

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