3E-A (Germany, Norway, Canada)
Jana Martin
An Environmental Scan of Rehabilitation Services for Adults with Deafblindness
Rehabilitation services aim to support individuals living with disabilities to achieve living independent and empowered lives. As deafblindness is a distinct disability, it requires specialized rehabilitation services. There are several organizations in the world with experience in offering such services but there is a lack of research on how these services are provided in practice. The goal of this doctoral study is to examine the practices, processes, logics, and routines used in specialized rehabilitation services for adults living with deafblindness. The presentation will give insight into the data collected during 2022 and spring 2023, and will provide an overview of preliminary interpretation and analysis approaches. The aim of this project is to gain insight into specialized rehabilitation services for individuals with deafblindness. It attempts to better understand their current practice. The results will contribute to the quality, development and further study of these services. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss preliminary analyses and interpretation approaches of the data collected within a PhD dissertation with other researchers, practitioners, and persons with lived experience.

3E-C (Netherlands)
Eline Heppe & Charlotte van de Molengraft
Consensus on How to Define the Functional Definition of Deafblindness in the Netherlands:
A Delphi-study Deafblindness (DB) is commonly defined using the WHO criteria for visual and hearing impairment. In the Netherlands, the access to DB specific care is often based on these criteria. However, the impact of DB is more complex than just combining the impact of vision and hearing loss. Therefore, not all people with DB fit these WHO criteria and, thus, do not have access to DB specific care. The aim of the study was to develop a Dutch functional definition of DB that describes DB in terms of the impact on daily functioning in order to emphasize the complexity of having a combination of vision and hearing loss, and to improve access to DB specific care in the Netherlands. In this presentation we will present the opinions and motivation of the experts on the topics related to the development of a Dutch functional definition of DB.