BHUBANESWAR: They may not be as physically able but on the mental capacities they have proved to be more than a match to their normal counterparts.
For the first time in the State, 23 deaf and dumb students had appeared in the Plus-Two Arts examination and all of them have come out successful.
Six of them — four girls and two boys — have secured first division while 15, comprising seven girls and eight boys, have got second division. The rest two boys were placed in third division. All were the students of the Satyabhama Devi College for Hearing Impaired (SDCHI) at Patrapara here and appeared for the examination at SH College centre.
According to managing trustee Niroja Laxmi Mohapatra, the SDCHI is the second college after Chennai to impart higher education to the children with hearing and speech disabilities.
Specially trained faculty combined modern methods like video visuals with the conventional sign language to teach the subjects along with writing. The students learnt subjects, including compulsory Oriya and English along with History, Economics, Political Science and Information Technology. They were given the same set of question papers as students of general colleges but had a time relaxation of half-an-hour.
Earlier, children with speech and hearing disabilities were not able to pursue higher education as there were no special institutions for them nor the general colleges had the infrastructure or personnel to handle such students.
The College was set up with Government support and commenced academic session from 2007-08. This is the first batch of Plus-Two students from the college.