ABU DHABI // Zayed University students have tried to walk a very difficult mile – in the shoes of the visually impaired.
And the experience has given them an idea of the pressing need to break down society’s attitudes to people with special needs.
As part of the university’s second White Cane Day, students were blindfolded to see what daily life was like for their blind classmates.
They had to eat in the canteen, navigate the hallways and take in lessons in complete darkness – much as the 28 blind or visually impaired students at the university’s two campuses have to do every day.
“People need to understand more about special needs,” said psychology student Loulwah Mohammed, 25, who is visually impaired. “These events help but it’s only Zayed University.
“We want to tell the whole society. They know but don’t really realise how we suffer.”
Ms Mohammed said that raising awareness was a key part of empowering those with special needs, of whom the two campuses have 100 among their 9,000 students.
“We are a young country and still the awareness is young,” said Fatma Al Qassimi, director of the office of special needs at the university, who is a wheelchair user after suffering from childhood polio.
“When I came to the university five years ago people were looking at me because I was in a wheelchair, but they got used to it and they learnt. It becomes part of the culture so we need to educate people.”
Mrs Al Qassimi, who studied in the UK where she had better access to special-needs learning, said the students were future policymakers and parents who could ensure that misconceptions were dispelled.
“Every year we educate a generation,” she said. “There is still a social stigma but slowly this is changing, and the more people we educate the better things will be.
“It is our job to make these young people independent and give them the opportunities available to everyone else – to allow them to enter the workplace with the education afforded to everyone else.”
Hala Bana, an inclusion specialist at the Ministry of Education, said things were improving with training for new teachers and ensuring there were technologies to make learning easier for the visually impaired, and even training sessions with parents.
“Things are changing in the UAE,” Mrs Bana said. “Things weren’t so organised regarding inclusion until recently but now they’re developing strategies that are helping to make schools for everyone.
“I’ve trained about 30 local teachers around the Emirates since 2011 and we have a special team for visual impairment.”
There are few statistics on the visually impaired in the UAE, but more than 285 million people worldwide suffer the disorders. Of those, 30 million are blind and 246 million have low vision, which is eyesight that cannot be corrected by spectacles, the World Health Organisation says.
Volunteering at the university event was Nouf Mohammed, 21, a business studies student. She has friends who are blind so the subject is close to her heart.
“It’s very hard for them,” Ms Mohammed said. “More people need to understand the issues of people with special needs. We need to make more awareness campaigns outside the university. I want to see more people with special needs alongside us.”
mswan@thenational.ae
