ORANGE COUNTY CHILDREN IN THE ARTS : Exhibit Lets Kids Experience Disability

The thin blond boy in the wheelchair inches his way up the wooden ramp, fiddling awkwardly with the braking mechanism. When he reaches the top he sighs with relief.

“It’s worth it!” he crows, and proudly rolls back down. Then he jumps out and runs off to practice pouring water into a glass while wearing a blindfold.

That’s a moment from “Another Way to Be,” a hands-on exhibit at the Children’s Museum in La Habra expressly designed to answer an able-bodied child’s questions about blind, deaf and orthopedically handicapped people.

“We want to give children an opportunity to experience what it’s like to be disabled, to sensitize them and let them see there really aren’t many differences,” museum director Catherine M. Michaels said. “We stress what you can do, not what you can’t do” as a disabled person.

The youngest visitors can test the acuity of their sense of sound, smell and touch with a tableful of homemade devices. Sniff boxes offer the what-is-this-odor experience of cheese, cloves, garlic and soap. Little hands exploring other boxes can guess at their contents (a shell, a stuffed animal, a metal statuette). And boxes meant to be shaken like mystery presents sound different, depending on whether they’re filled with nails or beans.

Another table offers a display of objects and routines that makes life easier for the vision-impaired. A plate becomes the equivalent of a clock in the world of the blind, with corn heaped up at the 8:00 position and a hamburger positioned between 4:00 and 6:00. A checkerboard with indented or raised squares and checkers that are either round or square allow the game to be played by either a sighted or a non-sighted person.

Playing cards with Braille markings let a blind person join a game of Old Maid. A coin purse with slots like a bus conductor’s allows coins to be more easily distinguished.

Children are invited to try putting on a mask and tapping their way with a cane. To show that not all forms of blindness are the same, some masks have tiny holes that simulate the spotty, limited view of someone suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease of the retina most commonly diagnosed in children or young adults. Another mask, made of opaque plastic, shows the world as a pale, watery blur.

There are big Braille books that can be touched and a Braille wall calendar. (All those white pages with raised dots and no pictures!) In the midst of a swarm of busy children, parents are busy coaching and learning and sometimes even trying out the equipment.

With a Braille slate, “it took me a long time to write a love letter to my husband,” said Connie Major, a frequent visitor to the museum with her three children. The slate is especially hard to use because the dots signifying each letter of the alphabet have to be punched in backward to be read correctly from the other side of the paper.

A teletypewriter used by the hearing impaired for phone conversations is a big hit even though it isn’t connected to another phone. Youngsters industriously type away and watch the message readout they’ve created.

A tape about deafness that can be heard with earphones is nearly inaudible, however, what with all the hubbub going on in the gallery. Dashing from one “game” to another, children seem absorbed in each pursuit, rarely stopping to ask a question. But a series of question-and-answer wall posters offer help to the parent with little personal background to respond to troubled queries.

How does a person become blind? Can a blind person ever see again? Can a blind person drive a car? Should you help a blind person cross the street? How do deaf people dance? Should you talk loudly to deaf people? Are deaf people dumb? Do braces hurt? How do people in a wheelchair get dressed? These and other questions get reassuring, down-to-earth answers.

Looking at a group of children’s artificial legs--so diminutive, they could be parts for a large doll--may be a heart stopper for a sympathetic adult. But it’s also a learning experience. As parent Connie Major remarked about a neighbor who is a double amputee: “It’s a concept for a child. They want to see your leg.”

With assistance from the Braille Institute, the Dayle-McIntosh Center in Anaheim, RP International/Orange County and other groups, the museum first designed the exhibit in 1981, the United Nations Year of Disabled Persons. New this year is wheelchair basketball (a game children are more likely to play minus the wheelchairs, an amused gallery aide said).

Director Michaels thinks that children are a little more knowledgeable about disability these days because of “mainstreaming” in the schools (allowing disabled children to attend regular classes) and increased awareness of the issue on TV.

On a Friday morning at the exhibit, some of the older children were able to recall encounters with disabled people.

“I used to have a best friend in a wheelchair,” reflected Colleen Shore, 10. “We used to leave her alone, and I never understood why.”

Volunteered Jessica Moore: “I knew a girl who had leukemia. She had to have her hair shaved off. We celebrated her birthday in the hospital.”

Neil Brackett, trying out a wheelchair, remembered that he had to use crutches when he hurt his knee. That’s another issue important to Michaels: “We are emphasizing temporary disabilities,” she said. “A lot of kids might break a leg, have surgery on an eye. We want them to understand that, while they weren’t born with (an impairment), sometime in life they might have this happen.”

A series of “Super Saturday Special Events” will further enrich children’s conceptions of what it’s like to live with a disability.

On Jan. 23, Al Peraza, a school principal, will talk about how he learned to live without the use of his hand. On Jan. 30, Marta Anchando of TASK will talk about resources for disabled children. Brian Combs will demonstrate signing on Feb. 6. Able-bodied and wheelchair-bound members of the Brad Parks Wheelchair Tennis Organization will hit the courts of the nearby La Habra Tennis Center on Feb. 20.

On Feb. 27, the museum will offer a program with life-size puppets demonstrating how people stricken with cerebral palsy or vision or hearing impairments go about their lives. And on March 5, Lauri Fenton and her guide dog, Teddi, will show how they work as a team to conquer some of the inconveniences of living without sight.

Even after the exhibit closes March 12, a “trunk program” version, with equipment-filled trunks for visual, hearing and orthopedic handicaps, may be borrowed for a two-week period by any teacher of grades one through six who is willing to pick up and return it. (Call (714) 694-1011 or (714) 526-2227, Ext. 271, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday to reserve a trunk.)

The Children’s Museum, 301 S. Euclid St., La Habra, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is $1 for children 3-16 and seniors (over 55), $1.50 for adults. Reservations are required for any group of 10 or more visitors. Group tours, scheduled on the hour and limited to 35 people per one-hour visit, must be arranged in advance by calling the tour scheduler at (213) 905-9793 during open hours.