María Carmen Algar Prieto

Support for Deaf Students in ESL/EFL Conversation Classes
This article has been written by Steve T. Fukuda, a professor of the University of Tokushima, Japan, and in these lines he tells us his experience when dealing with deaf students, and he states there are many student with this physiological problems, so teachers must be prepared to face this situation.
The main activities and ideas he proposes are related with visual elements such as images, flashcards, etc. and written activities that have an important role in their learning process. Obviously, the use of sign language would be the best one, because it is the tool they use for communication, but there are also many other options that could satisfy the necessities of these students. Moreover, this professor also highlights the figure of a “note-taker” who writes on the blackboard in a summarized way the main ideas the teacher is saying, so that deaf students connect them to make them coherent.
At the end of the article, Fukuda proposes a list of some strategies a teacher must take into account when instructing deaf student as a summary of the whole article.
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Fukuda-DeafStudents.html
STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING STUDENTS WITH VISION IMPAIRMENTS
This article is about blind students, and as we have seen in the previous one, there also some proposals to manage a classroom with students with this disability.
The main proposals appearing in the article deal with the hearing capacity, because this is the best way these students can manage themselves. So the teacher can provide them with materials and activities that best suit them. Video-descriptions and recordings are the best options, but the role of the teacher is also very important. He/she has to offer students a complete and detailed description of every activity they will elaborate (pictures and images, etc.), as well as the use of Braille adapted materials.
http://www.as.wvu.edu/~scidis/text/vision_impair.html