'The requirement to stay six feet away from other people is actually not safe for me. As a blind person, I need to touch my guide.'
For tens of thousands of deaf-blind Americans, who have severe hearing and sight impairment, the"Our way of communicating and our culture, everything relies on touch," said Ashley Benton, deaf-blind services coordinator for the state of North Carolina."Now we're not allowed to touch, and we have to practice social distancing."
Tony Cancelosi, president and CEO of Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind in Washington, DC, says volunteers who support deafblind Americans have become much more reticent to participate during the pandemic due to health risks. "Sometimes I do feel lonely. My other friends that are completely blind are feeling very, very isolated," said Wismer, who is is completely deaf and has very low vision."It's very difficult for everyone, but especially for deaf-blind people across the country."
"I lost a friend two weeks ago to COVID and she was very young -- early 30s -- and it kind of prompted me to go ahead and get my advance directive and my will together," she said. "There is an assumption in a lot of medical communities that it's better to be dead than disabled," said Haben Girma, a leading deaf-blind advocate and the first deaf-blind woman to graduate from Harvard Law School.
Alexander wants the world to know that deaf-blind professionals are pitching in during the coronavirus crisis. She's volunteering her remote counseling services to hospital workers fighting the virus on the front lines. "We were able to work with the officers who have the appropriate PPE to go in and check on this deaf-blind consumer to make sure that they were safe," Benton said."It's so important because we're all going through this together and it's impacting all of us."
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