Learn sign language at least a little
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Ivana Findejsová was born on 17 August 1961. Her parents, Marie and Vít Kleček lived together with her father’s parents on a farm in Hostlovice near Čáslav. Her father was deaf, her mother was severely hard of hearing, and her husband Jiří and son Martin are also deaf. The grandparents Marie and Jiří Kleček, with whom Ivana Findejsová’s family lived on the farm, were hearing. Her father worked as a mechanic on the railroad, and her mother worked as a seamstress. From three, she grew up in an institution, attended kindergarten, primary, and later secondary school for people with hearing problems in Holečka Street in Prague’s Smíchov district, and lived there in a boarding house. The family communicated in sign language, which her hearing grandmother also used. She trained as a seamstress, the only profession offered to deaf girls. After her apprenticeship, she stayed in a hostel in Prague and found a job in the Pleas textile factory. She met her husband Jiří at a dance party for the deaf, and they moved together to Pilsen. There, she joined the Plzeňské dílo production cooperative, but in 2008, the new owner dismissed her. She worked in the café Pierot in Plzeň, which operates as a sheltered workshop. Then she joined a sheltered workshop in Třemošná, and in 2023, in another sheltered workshop, she glued boxes to put spices in. Her husband worked as a room painter, and when the company dismissed him, he could not find another job and retired on disability. In 2023, she was living in Pilsen.
