ORLA O'SULLIVAN

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SEE the Music, FEEL the Music:
​Making Music Education Accessible for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

When Orla was six weeks old, she became Deaf and Visually Impaired after receiving life saving medication for double pneumonia. Her mother Betty was determined that she would be treated the same as her siblings, and would be given all the same opportunities. In spite of her profound deafness, Betty was determined that Orla would talk and so she started to teach her nursery rhymes which helped her speech. Refusing to accept Orla’s profound deafness, Betty would play songs on the piano and would hold Orla’s little fingers on the keys so that she could ‘feel’ the different sounds through the vibrations. From the first note, Orla was mesmerized and this was the beginning of her experience of the sound of music. Little did Betty realize that she had already put Orla on her musical path and future career. Orla has over 24 years of experience teaching piano to students of all abilities. In this workshop, Orla will demonstrate a new assistive technologies that she has co-developed called the Viboxo SoundSenses system for learners of music who are deaf or hard of hearing.