In India, the hearing impaired or children with learning disabilities usually go to special schools and after the basic studies, they are encouraged to choose and learn vocational skills. Many have to forego their dreams of higher studies due to the absence of colleges that impart higher education in sign language.

Two friends Aman Sharma and Deepesh Nair who were volunteering in a few schools in Mumbai noticed the drastic shortcomings in the provisions to teach deaf children. They couldn’t come to terms with the fact that deaf children simply give up their dream of higher studies and take up traditional vocational subjects like bookbinding, saree bordering, laddu making etc. as there are no colleges for the hearing impaired.

TEACH – An Organisation For The Hearing Impaired

Sharma and Nair quit their jobs in multinational companies and started TEACH -- Training and Education Centre for Hearing Impaired. According to Nair, most of the education in Indian schools is imparted orally, so the deaf children suffer and feel left out. TEACH works with the students through role modelling and exposures which boosts their thought process building. Children are exposed to healthy competition and learning processes that make them conducive to higher education.

Learning Skills

For learning, it is imperative that students should know a language. Without knowing a language one cannot learn, so it becomes necessary to introduce sign language for the hearing impaired. TEACH has introduced a special technique to overcome this problem. It has a special extensive programme designed for schools where importance is given to learning the English language. TEACH trains students for three years after they finish class 10. English and Maths are taken up in the first year of training.  After that, course work for classes 11 and 12 are taken up.

According to Nair, educational institutions could be made more inclusive by conducting classes separately but in the premises of the college, training regular teachers with sign language and making the educational content less oral and more visual.