“Can he be taught?” Michael asked of his son Ferdinand. Besides being almost completely deafblind, Michael warned us repeatedly, “His IQ is very low.” In addition, he is prone to violent outbursts, especially when he doesn’t get what he wants.

“But I don’t know what he wants because he can’t talk to me,” Michael lamented.
For three days, we tried to help Ferdinand make a connection between the symbol on the 3D-printed card he was feeling to the object it represented. At best, the results were hit or miss (mostly miss). The majority of the time, Ferdinand seemed absolutely clueless.

On the last day, my team and a local leader came running up to me excitedly. After discovering that one of the things Ferdinand likes to do at home is to open the windows and tie back the curtains, the local leader gave him the SUN symbol for window and after allowing him to feel the symbol, directed him towards the window so he could open it. Then the leader did the same for door. Pretty soon, Ferdinand demonstrated consistent accuracy for the symbols “window” and “door.” A connection had finally been formed.

Students like Ferdinand who have additional intellectual disabilities besides deafblindness may not be able to transition to Braille because their brain needs concrete concept representations. SUN provides those concrete representations whereas Braille relies on abstract connections. These students will need to stay with SUN.

This is what just 3 chapters of the Bible printed in SUN looks like. If I asked hearing and sighted people at a church to pull out their Bibles, they would probably reach into their bag and pull out a book, their phone, or a tablet. Each of those things would contain the entirety of God’s Word. Our goal is that every single deafblind person, even those like Ferdinand, can hold God’s entire Word in their hand. That is why we are partnering with Orbit Research to develop the SUN tablet.

The SUN tablet uses the same raised pin technology as the Orbit Reader 20 Plus, but the surface is large enough to contain several sentences. The SUN tablet pictured above displays the first half of the salvation lesson. When God said in 2 Peter 3:9 that His desire is for all to come to repentance, He really means all. If you would like to be a part of seeing that happen for people like Ferdinand, Click here.