Foreign Language Teaching for Impaired Persons

 As I evaluated the website islcollective.com one of my disappointing discoveries was the lack of resources and software for impaired persons. This made me ponder on foreign language teaching  here in Barbados and our capability to teach persons who are visually or hearing impaired. In recent times we have seen children with vision and hearing loss enter our mainstream education system rather than be educated at the school dedicated to person with disabilities. This practice was made on the premise that being differently abled doesn't mean unable. While I believe this to be true, I also have to evaluate our resources here in Barbados and I must beg the question are we foreign language teachers here in Barbados equipped to teaching children with physical impairments? Have we been trained to do so? Are we familiar  with programs such as JAWS and Google Live Transcribe and other assistive technologies which can be used in the teaching of such persons?

If we are to be honest, we can say without a doubt that we are not certainly not sufficiently equipped to teach foreign languages to students with such impairments. Below I have posted two short video on Google Live Transcribe and JAWS in the hope that this will pique our interest.