Text : Patrick Hurst Photos : Laurent Henn & Louise Gibson
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: s s e l e s n e S ? t s o L g Somethin Can you touch the signs ?
the IT specialist had managed to set up at school. Nevertheless, something more spontaneous was missing and Patrick was eager to find out about this mysterious thing they called sign language. How was that to be done, though, without seeing anything ? Louise could at least read his lips, but how were they to communicate spontaneously in both ways ?
Patrick Hurst & Louise Gibson
Living without senses
One day, a blind teacher met a deaf photographer in a portrait exhibition on diversity. Since then, four years have passed and the photographer, Louise, now works at the same place as the teacher, Patrick, the Lycée Ermesinde in Hollerich. But how would they manage to talk with each other ? Would they ever be able to share emotions and feelings, and work together ?
Suddenly, a flash came into their mind : there lived an American academic who was blind and deaf herself. Her name was Helen Keller (1880-1968). How could she become an academic nearly 100 years ago without hearing and seeing a thing and without such technical gadgets like the Internet or text messaging ? This was only possible through her childhood nurse and assistant, Anne Sullivan, who was almost blind herself. Both had developed a common tool to use : touch and memory ! Indeed, the hand is a small space to write onto. But memory can help to overcome this. In technical terms, it is like a computer, on which the hand is the keyboard and your brain the memory combining the letters into meaningful words.
Email, that was an easy solution. Then, there was a laptop with a screen reader
That’s how they started their first “hand alphabet” lesson a few months ago.
