See-through solution: Deaf Indonesians turn to clear COVID-19 masks
28 April, 2020
Lip-reading suddenly got tricky when everyone covered their face through the COVID-19 pandemic, but Indonesian tailors have hit after the perfect solution - see-through masks.
One husband and wife duo in Makassar on Sulawesi island started making cloth masks with transparent plastic in the middle to greatly help fellow deaf people.
"Because the pandemic started, many people are wearing face masks. For deaf people, we can not understand what others say because we can not read their lips," said 52-year-old Faizah Badaruddin.
"There were a whole lot of misunderstandings," she added.
Badaruddin and her husband used to sew cushions, bed linens and curtains for customers.
But when orders dried up, Badaruddin looked up instructional videos online to work through how exactly to produce masks for the hearing impaired.
Since early April, the tiny business has been generating as many as two dozen transparent masks a day in small, medium and large sizes.
They sell for between 10,000 rupiah to 15,000 rupiah (US$0.65 cents US$0.97 cents) each.
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