An exceptional innovation by Mrs. Mary Lee, a Scottish teacher, has enabled thousands of people with multiple disabilities to express themselves and given them a new lease of hope in an otherwise life-of-despair. Most of us, who are blessed with the heavenly gift of being able to talk, communicate with others, see and hear, sometimes fail to appreciate the plight of people who are multi-disabled. It would be a noble task on our part to think of the ways that we can come as a possible help or even innovate approaches that can make the life of these people cheerful.

Many have heard of the American Sign Language, the Braille system that is widely used by blind people to read and write and even the Kenyan Sign Language that helps many underprivileged African children to communicate. The Canaan Barrie System begs to differ from the others. It is distinctive in the sense it involves human compassion, trust and touches that separates it from other sign languages that are in use. Canaan Barrie is a way of communicating through movement and touch for children with visual and hearing impairment and additional support needs. The system employs a way of creating a maximum vocabulary of movements, gestures, touches having a specific reference point on the body and that corresponds to daily routines, needs, wants and interests of the child. The most significant aspect of the system is that it can be used comfortably in home as well as in schools for deaf and blinds, which enables both the trained interpreter as well as untrained parents to use it at ease. The only thing for untrained parents and adults is that they should use the system in a slower, simpler and clearer way for effective and holistic communication.

Mrs. Mary Lee, an ordinary person with an extraordinary outlook, was perhaps motivated to innovate this noble approach by seeing the predicament of her two blind and deaf kids. Her innovation is now widely practised the world over. She was recently awarded with the Lifetime Achievement award in 2010 at the Scottish Education Awards in Glasgow, UK. She currently teaches at the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh, UK. She is also a revered globe trotter on charitable missions to underdeveloped nations, like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.