Sharjah, Feb 16: The Reading Festival in Sharjah aims to emphasise the importance of reading, and part of its efforts is to increase the awareness among children with reading and visual disabilities.

The festival is held at Sharjah Expo Centre until Sunday."There are still a lot of Arab families who do not know that their children are dyslexic, and we are here to inform them about the tell-tale signs and how they can be helped," said Hamza Al Ayasrah, a speech and language therapist at the Specialty Centre for Child Care in Sharjah.
Al Ayasrah's goal during the festival is to reach out to as many teachers and parents as possible, and to educate them on how to deal with dyslexic students.

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"There are different categories of dyslexia, and some may be more extreme than others ... we want parents to know that a centre is available to students and that the whole family can benefit if they participate in counselling sessions and workshops," he said.

The Specialty Centre for Child Care provides classes on how to write letters and join them together to form words, in addition to teaching children on how to divide words into syllables and sounds.

"Our centre also caters to children with an articulation disorder, so we can help them pronounce letters better and also to overcome stuttering," said Al Ayasrah.

Another disability that is also receiving attention at the Reading Festival is visual impairment, and a stand is dedicated to this, with a book on how to learn Braille and information on where families can obtain support.

"We currently have 16 children who are visually impaired and we are teaching them how to read Braille. By participating at the exhibition, I hope that residents will be aware on where to go if they have relatives or children who are visually impaired," said Hiba Abdul Kareem, a therapist in visual impairment, Early Intervention Centre, Sharjah City for Humanitarian Services (SCHS).

The Braille system is a universal method that is widely used by visually impaired people to read and write, and is read from left to right. Each Braille character is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each.

The SCHS offers counselling to students on how to be socially active, how to talk properly and also on how to write.

"We have special equipment at the centre and provide individual courses on how to write in Braille. The machine is simple to use and is in the form of a notebook. We also teach members how to read Braille, which can take either six months or one year to learn, depending on a person's capability," she said.

Source: http://gulfnews.com/