Activists urge that children living with combined multiple disabilities need special attention in education including having schools that can cater for their academic needs. Activists also say that lack of such schools remains a challenge despite several efforts in place to foster inclusive education for all children in Rwandan schools.

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Activists for the rights of people with disabilities said that education for those with deaf-blindness requires the use of tactile sign language, calling for urgent action to respond to their academic needs, through establishment of schools meant for such special needs children.

Tactile signing is a common means of one way of communicating in sign language that also involves touch, used by people with deaf-blindness. It is also called hands-on signing or ‘tracking.

Beth Mukarwego, Chairperson of Rwanda Union of the Blind (RUB) said that children with multiple disabilities "deaf-blind” struggle to get educational services due to the lack of special schools for them.

Mukarwego made the remarks recently a parliamentary session that was intended to increase citizen participation in parliamentary activities.

"In recent research we conducted, it was realised that many children with multiple disabilities "deaf-blind” do not attend schools, there are still no special schools for them” said Mukarwego, who has visual impairment.

However, the special education needs for children with multiple disabilities have not yet been met, Mukarwego said, indicating that as for the tactile sign language that would contribute to achieving that, "the number of students must be equal to the number of students as they communicate by print on palms”.

Print on the Palm involves the person who is communicating a message "writing” block letters on the palm of the receiver using the index finger as if it is a pen.

The Executive Director of Rwanda Organization of Persons with Deaf Blindness (ROPDB), Joseph Musabyimana, said that in three districts where the organization carried out a study, it was shown that children with multiple disabilities "deaf-blind” are academically excluded.

"According to the 2018 study we conducted in three districts on 167 people, 60 per cent among them were school-age children who were not enrolled in schools, 40 per cent were adults with no educational background. This shows the gap of education in deaf-blind individuals,” he said.

Musabyimana added that deaf-blind people want to be recognised as individuals having a distinct disability category as one of the steps to address their social problems.

Meanwhile, deaf-blind was not specified in classified categories under the Ministerial Order of 2009 determining the modalities of classifying persons with disabilities into basic categories based on the degree of disability.

Ministry of Education plans to address this issue

According to the Ministry of Education, there is a special needs and inclusive education policy that guides the ministry on how to deal with learners with special education needs, from identification of disabilities and what is needed to deliver quality education for them. Those requirements, it indicated, include teachers training, infrastructure, teaching and learning materials.

ALSO READ: Making school inclusive for children living with disabilities

Rose Baguma, Director General of Policy Analysis in the Ministry of Education, said the ministry was also working with the National Commission for People with Disabilities (NCPD) to get real numbers of people with disabilities and their corresponding type of disability, which would help the education sector to design appropriate strategy and support for the school going category.

"We will have real numbers of children with disability and the type of disability, from that information Ministry of Education will take appropriate strategies to ensure that they learn, a special decision to have a school for multiple disabilities or accommodate them to the existing special schools or inclusive schools will be taken thereafter” she said.

So far, the Rwanda Organization of Persons with Deaf Blindness (ROPDB) said, it has identified 350 deafblind persons.