A child who cannot tell when the light changes

In Too Precious to Lose, Eun-hye is a child with both sight and hearing gone. The account treats that combination as a type of its own, not as vision loss plus hearing loss. Without ordinary language, a parent has to learn more than one way of talking; a child who is left alone socially needs someone to open a way to other people; daily skills and a more independent life have to be taught; and raising a disabled child can weigh on a parent, so that weight itself needs care.

The body pays a price. Balance is poorer, walking is less steady when the vestibular organs are under-stimulated, and the risk of a fall rises, including in a dangerous place. In one scene, a person with vision loss crosses on a green light, but Eun-hye stands still when the signal changes, because she cannot tell. Food choice is narrower without sight or hearing, and a meal without sound or a visible cue can raise the risk of an eating difficulty. Oral care is hard without a guardian, and without hearing it is harder to learn how to keep the mouth clean, so the risk of caries can rise. In another scene, with a guardian away, she lives on bread in the house.

The mind and the social world pay a price as well. Moving and talking are hard, so friendships form slowly. She is shown living in a small space under a desk, and failing to settle in a class for children with vision loss at a special-education centre. Interaction with others and with family is thin, and attachment can suffer. Frustration at not being understood, and trouble with a change in the surroundings, raise stress and anxiety. In one scene she cries out when the bread is not in its usual place.

How a hand can talk, and how a body can be kept safer

The work of health education, in this telling, starts close to the hand and the foot. A tactile cane, a braille block, and other walking aids are to be taught, and safe routes indoors and out, at home and at school, are to be learned. Balance and movement can be practised through touch — a gym ball, a trampoline, work on a mat — and with exercise fitted to the person, including work that stimulates the vestibular system. Toothbrushing can be taught by touch, including with an electric brush; a guardian should check the mouth regularly; and the habit should be practised again and again.

Communication is taught through the palm and through sign that can be felt. Palm writing puts letters on the deaf-blind person’s palm, instead of on paper or a phone. Tactile sign is sign language felt with the hands. Close-up sign is used, close by, with a person who still has some residual vision. A support centre may loan AAC devices, such as a vibrating alerter or a braille terminal. Braille is to be taught, and a guardian may need to learn to read it too. The Miracle Welfare Foundation is cited for a photograph of Son Chang-hwan using tactile sign, and for images of a braille terminal and of children in an autumn touch class at the Helen Keller learning-support centre, including a parents’ self-help group.

A guardian is asked to learn sign and tactile sign, to show feeling through the hands, and to draw a response through touch and play. Emotional support includes feedback that names a child’s strengths, ways of showing feeling such as tactile pictures and emotion cards, and play therapy. Peer work includes disability-awareness teaching, tactile play and team projects, and local programmes such as camps and group activity. Meals can be taught by classifying food through touch, by cooking with a guardian, and by practising how to eat when sight and hearing are limited. Dressing, washing, and other daily skills are taught in steps fitted to the child, and, where they help, a braille smartwatch or a tactile alarm. The methods underneath all of this are touch-centred teaching, repetition at a centre, a hospital, and at home, education of the guardian alongside the child, and the use of more than one remaining sense — touch, taste, smell, vibration.

A law enacted in 1968, and a bill that disappeared

Deaf-blindness is estimated here at about 1.8 people in 10,000. That estimate is left as it is given. The educational need is highly individual. Onset of both impairments is most often at age three or under, and the timing greatly affects communication and how a child can be taught. As of Park Gyeong-ran, writing in 2023 with Lee Tae-hun, Korea still had no separate school for deaf-blind students. Under the Miracle Welfare Foundation there is a Helen Keller Center, and Siloam Deafblind Learning Support Center as an early-education body, but a nationwide support system had not been built.

Helen Keller is introduced as an American deaf-blind educator, writer, and human-rights activist, who was educated after losing both hearing and sight, and who travelled, spoke, and wrote — including Three Days to See and The Story of My Life — and worked with the American Foundation for the Blind, and founded a Helen Keller international fund. The 1962 film The Miracle Worker is named as one telling of her life. In the United States a Helen Keller Act was enacted in 1968, as a legal basis for centres and for separate training and resources, and eleven centres were later set up nationwide, with New York State at the centre of that work, offering community-linked and private-organisation services.

In Korea, if a person living with vision loss later loses hearing, vision is treated as the main disability and hearing as the secondary one, and only the main disability’s services can be used, not both at once. In February 2019, Lee Myeong-su, then chair of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee, introduced a bill on support for deaf-blind people, covering a definition, regular surveys of families, an expanded communication-support system, a Korea Helen Keller Center, and international exchange. After debate on a special law versus the existing Disability Welfare Act, the work was narrowed to adding some provisions to that Act, with a survey first and a delivery system later. The standalone Act did not pass the National Assembly and disappeared. The Miracle Welfare Foundation Helen Keller Center has since held an annual signature campaign on the Day of Persons with Disabilities, under the title “We cannot become Helen Keller.” The Disability Welfare Act was amended, but state and local support is still described as thin. A 2020 Ministry of Health and Welfare survey of deaf-blind people reported that Korea had no specialised institution to teach communication such as tactile sign, or to support interpreters.

Why the crossing, and the bill, are held together

Eun-hye’s day is made of a light she cannot see, bread that may or may not be in its place, and a hand that can still be written on. The law that would have named that life as a life of its own did not pass. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Health-education account built around the film Too Precious to Lose and the child Eun-hye, with parent education for a deaf-blind child (Korean source page).
2. Park Gyeong-ran and Lee Tae-hun, “The current status of deaf-blind students and the state of educational support,” Korean Journal of Physical, Multiple, and Health Disabilities 66, no. 4 (2023): 117–138, including the estimate of about 1.8 per 10,000 and the 2023 remark on the Helen Keller Center, Siloam, and the lack of a nationwide system. Park Gyeong-ran and Park Mi-jeong, 2022, on the difficulties and support needs of parents. Won Yeong-mi, Jeon Ji-hye, and Oh Chung-won, 2021, on everyday disaster awareness among people with deaf-blindness.
3. Helen Keller Act of 1968 in the United States, and eleven centres with New York State at the centre, as described here. Lee Myeong-su’s February 2019 bill; the standalone Act that did not pass; the campaign “We cannot become Helen Keller.” Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2020 survey of deaf-blind people, reporting no specialised institution for tactile-sign education or interpreter support.
4. Kim Cheol-ju, “A study of overseas cases for introducing a Helen Keller Act for deaf-blind people,” Social Law Studies 43 (2021): 125–167. Kim So-yeong, “For those who have lost both sight and hearing there is no Helen Keller Act,” Nocut News, 2021. Lee Byeol, “How far has a society for deaf-blind people come,” News Post, 2023. Jang Seon-ah and others, “Effective parent-education methods for children with visual and hearing disabilities,” Language Therapy Research 22, no. 4 (2013). Kim Seong-jong, 2013, Seongnam Disability Welfare Center. Miracle Welfare Foundation materials, including Son Chang-hwan using tactile sign.

Last updated: 14 November 2026