Abu Dhabi: Eight-year-old Sariya Al Mansouri can now easily hear her mother calling out to her from the next room. Her new personal FM system guarantees a hearing range of 10 metres, instead of the two metre-range that her old hearing aid facilitated.
Rasha Mahmoud, Sariya's teacher at Al Muzdalifa Private School, said that the system could considerably reduce Sariya's total learning time at school too.
"Since she can hear from a greater distance now, she will feel free to sit anywhere in the classroom instead of as close to the teacher as possible.
"She will therefore feel more comfortable and be able to learn better and quicker," Rasha said.
The advanced hearing aid is one of the many free learning tools — worth Dh3.5 million — that have been gifted to special needs pupils, in Abu Dhabi, by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec).
Customised tools
The 28 items distributed by Adec include books and atlases in Braille, magnification kits, specialised laptops, specialised learning software and talking calculators for the hearing and visually-impaired.
Hana Al Hamdani, supervisor for special needs pupils and head of the functional committee for special needs equipment at Adec, told Gulf News that the tools were being distributed to all 65 pupils integrated into public schools and higher educational institutions in the emirate.
"Depending on their individual needs, the equipment will also be given to 23 home-schooled special needs students," Al Hamdani added.
