Xinhua
17th June 2020
Across China: Unlocking the world of sound for hearing-impaired kids
Loudspeakers blare out children's songs as 4-year-old Ding Haoyu and his peers gyrate to imitate the gestures of their teacher in a kindergarten in northwest China's Gansu Province.
Dancing, drawing and chasing one another in the playground... these kids seem no different to other preschoolers if not for the hearing devices plugged to their ears.
Born in a remote and impoverished village in Gansu, Ding was found with hearing disability at birth. Benefiting from local government's rehabilitation project for disabled children, he received a free cochlear implant and related training in Gansu Hearing-Speech Rehabilitation Center.
Since it was established in 1989, the center in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, has trained more than 4,000 hearing-impaired children and nearly 60,000 parents.
With the appropriate hearing device as well as speech and auditory training, over 800 children went on to join regular primary and high schools and even colleges.