This is only Center for the hearing impaired in the North Indian town of Varanasi, which has a Computer Learning Center with Software specifically designed for the hearing impaired children.

There are 2 teachers who teach children English language, Indian Sign Language in addition to use of computer.

Varanasi is one of the district headquarters of state of Uttar Pradesh, covering 1,336 villages, has 575,900 children under the age of 6 years. The only reliable incidence of deafness in Asian children has been provided by Naeem and Newton to be of 5.09 to 9.61 per 1000 children between 5 to 16 years .

The hearing impaired children, especially from poorer economic sections, develop gestural communication system learnt from parent’s gestures and not exposed to learning Indian Sign Language. The hearing impaired child’s normal modality for language is not auditory and oral, but visual and manual. In developing countries like India, due to the family and society’s low expectation of future development, there is a preconceived notion that these children are “severely handicapped beyond remedial measures” and therefore will be a burden to the family. Therefore scant encouragement is given to develop their manual expression of language and visual cues, which is by teaching a standardized sign language.

This problem is further complicated by the fact that India has 20 “Official” languages and the tradition of instilling “oral” skills to the prelingually deaf children. This leads to majority of the hearing deficit children to communicate by limited gestural codes at home and in immediate neighborhood. This severely restricts their educational advancement employment prospects and future.

The problems in the community:

1. There is no Health Care Policy of Mandatory Screening for newborn infants for Hearing in India.
2. The Otoaccoustic Emission testing machine is prohibitively costly and economically poorer families and their Medical Providers do not have any access to it.
3. Due to lack of Health education, superstitions and belief in traditional medicines, parents wait inordinately long, hoping that there children will develop language at some future time, therefore losing valuable time for early intervention.
4. Any type of physical handicap is viewed by families as a sign of ill omen and the child is viewed as an economic liability for the family, therefore the child is kept away from mainstream education.
5. The School for the Deaf mainly caters to the children of the poorer economic families, its running costs depend on meager Governmental Funding, leading to hiring of teachers who are trained in “oral” method of teaching, instead of being conversant in Indian Sign Language. Teachers trained in Indian Sign language are rare, do not want to relocate beyond large Metropolitan cities and also more expensive to hire.
6. Due to poor funding the School cannot hire teachers who are conversant in English and buy computers for education of the children.
7. The hearing impaired children who lack exposure and knowledge of English language, Indian Sign Language and Computer skills have no prospects of making any progress in educational qualifications and have no job prospects, apart from menial labor.