Toys for the Handicapped

When children walk on it, the orange carpet whines, wheezes, pipes and trills. When they shout, snap their fingers or stamp their feet, the multihued kaleidoscopic pattern projected on the wall changes its shape and color. The carpet and kaleidoscope are only two of 112 remarkable toys included in an audience-participation show that is about to tour England after drawing an enthusiastic response from handicapped children in London. The unique exhibition was organized by Roger Haydon, an industrial designer, and Jim Sandhu, a medically trained lecturer on problems of the handicapped. It was designed to demonstrate how blind, autistic, crippled and retarded children can be helped to cope with their biggest problem: isolation from an environment that they find frustrating and frightening. Abnormal children, Sandhu explains, "seldom know what it means to fall off, climb into, squeeze through." Thus they find it difficult to "build up images of the world through their senses."

To remedy the situation, Haydon and Sandhu propose the use of toys to lure handicapped children into more normal activity. The "talking" carpet helps blind children to turn outside themselves for stimulation. So does the "buzz bubble," a plastic dome covered with electrodes that produce, on touch, sounds ranging from a low hum to a high whistle. The blind are also psychologically stimulated by the "tactile board," actually a big box with 35 compartments behind sliding doors that are finished in textured materials--sticks, beads, sandpaper, glass and felt. Tucking things away in the cubbyholes, blind children experience the thrill of finding them again by remembering the feel of each hiding place.

For the autistic or nontalking child, the kaleidoscope--linked to a sound-sensitive electronic circuit--is just as much fun; the changing patterns encourage him to make noises so that he can watch the visual effects his sounds produce. With the retarded, another favorite --because it makes no motion that the children would consider threatening--is a sealed transparent tube holding two Ping Pong balls that float in slow motion from end to end, their movement held to a reassuring snail's pace by the resistance of the trapped air.

Even the totally paralyzed are enjoying the toy show. They are particularly enchanted by the "trammock," a basket-shaped, rubber-rimmed combination playpen and hammock that is suspended from the ceiling. Seated inside it, immobile children can be swung round and round or bounced up and down, giving them, says Sandhu, "the miraculous feeling of movement in space."

The most popular toys are the inflatables: an 8-foot-long sausage and a 10-foot-square air mattress that looks like an upside-down wading pool. They were designed by Haydon and Sandhu themselves, and are described by Sandhu as "therapeutically liberating" because they are "friendly, motherly, soft and safe" even while challenging the severely handicapped "to feel they can be mobile." One paralyzed six-year-old who has been using the inflatables for two years at the Mazehill Junior Training Center near London has taught himself to walk 100 feet unaided by practicing with the sausage, which he straddled and used to pull himself along. The toys also appeal to healthy youngsters, who enjoy sharing their play with the handicapped.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.