SHILLONG: Prof Boguslaw ‘Bob’ Marek, OBE, Department of ELT Typhlomethodology, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lubin, Poland gave a heart-warming insight into the world of the blind children in his presentation at the Asian Confluence Conference Centre, Shillong on Thursday.
Bob, founder of “Hungry Fingers” – a small organization specializing in designing educational tools which help totally blind learners understand difficult concepts based on visual experience and spatial relations.
He is honoured with the Order of British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his English for the blind children.
In his talk titled “What colour is the wind?” he spoke about the many challenges and solutions around that is associated with the world of a blind person. He took to help the blind children find their way in life after he found that something is missing in his life following his PhD.
He said that blind people face various challenges in life, which he despises to call problems, and they have solutions. While informing that there are different types of visual impairment he gave the example of a child with a blurred vision who can see things as if through a key hole.
“They learn things with a sense of touch and they have made their names all over, such as, blind accordion player, jazz musician, climbing the Mount’ Everest, rope walking, shooting robbers in their chest, earning imprisonment for robbing banks etc.,” he said as the near full hall burst into laughter.
Displaying Peter Bruegel’s painting of few blind men leading one another holding a long stick, he said that it is long forgotten, adding “Blind people do not need pity but should be given chance to develop their potentialities and opportunities by those who are sighted,” said Bob who is in India for the first time.
The professor of English who runs a resource centre for visually impaired university students and teaches ESL to blind and partially sighted children also said interesting things about what blind children most often asks.
On solutions he asked if reading, writing and drawing accessible to the blind and how. He shared many illustrations how this is possible, such as, Braille book, Braille based typewriter and among the most sophisticated in modern world are Braille laptop / notepad where the user put the left hand on the device as she/he types and checks with the other, magnifying computer for people with lower vision among others.
Ending his talk with relation between objects and knowledge he said that whether it is one thing or group of objects, how they are related, front, back, high, low, near etc. for a blind child is not possible without the help of sighted person.
“Rotograph, Symetrograph, Transfograph are various tools used to teach children about objects, models, sizes and shapes,” he added.
He was in the city for a workshop with the students of Bethany Society.