Mano speaks about disabilities issues

Edwin Mano is an author, motivator and educator who was born with a disability of visual impairment.

Post matric Mano studied office administration and served for eight years as a receptionist at a non-profit organisation called T-SHAD.

He was also part of the board of directors there and became the social services manager at the centre.

Mano served at Ekurhuleni provincial disability forum as a chairperson.

His era of service to the community involved public awareness plenaries and development of policies and frameworks for persons living with disabilities like visual and hearing impairment.

Mano is not a novice when it comes to the challenges faced by people living with disabilities.

He said he grew up in a community where he was the only child living with the disability.

“I attended my primary school years at a special school and went on to an integrated school for my high school. At the integrated school, I studied with children who had no disabilities.

“I learnt braille in primary school where we had a resource centre teacher who was tasked with transcribing, therefore, becoming a link between the class teacher and the visually impaired learner,” said Mano.

He said as a child he experienced challenges in the society.

“I would have people testing my ability to identify, recognise and remember them. I guess this resulted from curiosity and society’s lack of knowledge on disability. They could not understand. Within my peers, I experienced a lot of isolation. I could not be involved in the children activities like jumping around and running,” said Mano.

He said sometimes as a child he would attempt to get involved but more often than not he would bump into objects, walls and sometimes he would fall into pits as he grew up in the rural areas.

“As a result, I had to be left back at home alone and to some extent, this is where discrimination starts to show. My father would keep me busy by reading books for me and this is where I developed the habit of listening to more radio.

“Growing up I found myself having no platform to express myself and consequently I developed a love of writing. During tertiary years I started to meet people with different disabilities and we would share our experiences. I learnt that we had common challenges and I began to learn more.”

He now uses his Perkins Brailler to share his thoughts and teach the community about his disability and other forms of impairments.

“I realised that people with disabilities were unable to speak for themselves. That inspired me to find a platform to share our issues on challenges we face as people living with disabilities.”