• Question: How are people born blind or deaf?

    Asked by anon-290052 on 24 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 24 Mar 2021:

      Hi,
      There are two main reasons for being born blind or deaf (or both!).
      Firstly environmental factors such as birth complications, such as being born too early (premature), infections or drinking alcohol during pregnancy.
      Then there are more genetic and chromosome factors like Down’s syndrome or cerebral palsy. Other genetic factors mean you are more likely to be born blind or deaf if your parents are too – this also impacts the likelihood of developing blindness or deafness during childhood.

    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 25 Mar 2021:

      Hello!
      There are quite a few different ways that we can look at things here – whilst developing a baby might not grow their eyes properly which means that they are unable to detect light, colours, changes in movements (and so on), this could be a genetic problem (we have something called DNA that tells our body how to grow, and sometimes things go wrong here!) or perhaps there was an accident. The same is possible with our ears and the parts within them (our ears contain several tiny bones that are used to transform vibrations in the air in to sounds we can understand).

      As well as this problems can come about when a person’s eyes and ears are completely fine but there is something wrong within their brain. Their information from the eyes and ears can come through with no problems at all, but the brain itself might not be able figure out what is going on. Our brains have specific sections that are used for specific things, so we have a section that works out what we’re seeing, and a section for what we’re hearing, and if we have damage to these areas then we can end up having big problems with our senses! The same kind of problems can happen here like with our eyes and ears; they might not grow properly or they might get damaged before they are born

    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 26 Mar 2021:

      The reasons for this may be genetic or caused by accident. Hearing/visually-impaired people remain a minority within a hearing/seeing majority, so we have to take into account their circumstances.

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