Deaf and blind children in Gaza are getting a few hours of class a week at most, and some none at all, a year after the October 2025 cease-fire, parents and teachers told Al Jazeera’s Enas Abu Ghayad in a report published on Sunday.

The two schools that served them are both out of action. The Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, a Gaza City group that has taught deaf children since 1992, had its building partly destroyed in the war, and what was left quickly filled with displaced families. Al-Noor, in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, was the only public middle and high school in Gaza for visually impaired students. It had about 80 pupils before it was badly damaged and closed.

Kenan al-Sabaa, 13, went to Atfaluna before the war began in October 2023. His hearing aid has broken, and the parts it needs, new plastic tubing, a rubber ear mold and batteries, can’t be found in Gaza under the Israeli siege. He missed the whole first year of the war. His family, displaced to Jalaa Street, now sends him to a temporary learning space Atfaluna runs.

It opens three days a week, for “limited hours not exceeding two hours a day,” said his father, Tamer al-Sabaa. “These few hours do not cover or repair the massive educational gap,” he said.

Mr. al-Sabaa said he was afraid that large-scale attacks could start again despite the cease-fire. His son, he said, “cannot hear the sounds of explosions, warning signals.”

The number of deaf people in Gaza has grown. About 20,000 people had registered hearing disabilities before October 2023, said Fadel Kuraz, a sign language interpreter and disability advocate with Atfaluna. Field assessments suggest that roughly 35,000 more have lost some or all of their hearing to explosions since then, he said.

Mr. Kuraz said hearing aids, batteries and spare parts were scarce, and that power and communications cuts made it hard to teach the visual lessons deaf children depend on. They go through trauma “without the ability to verbally express what is on their mind,” he said. He called meeting their needs “an urgent humanitarian necessity” and asked for the siege to be lifted and for more temporary learning spaces to be set up.

For blind students, centers run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, offer some primary schooling. Duaa Omar Basheer, a counselor at al-Noor, said she feared older pupils would lose their Braille and their ability to study on their own. She warned of “an entire generation of visually-impaired individuals at risk of illiteracy.”

Jana Shreim, 12, is legally blind. Her strong prescription glasses broke in November 2023, when her family fled the Shati refugee camp, and they can’t afford new ones. Since then her sight has gotten much worse. She stumbles in places she doesn’t know, she gets bullied and her eyes hurt.

Her mother, Wafaa Shreim, said Jana “has to identify people by their voices.” Ms. Shreim teaches her at home on a Braille machine while caring for another daughter who is also visually impaired.

The families’ situation is common in Gaza. In a survey published in July, Atfaluna found that 97.6 percent of households with and without disabled members had been displaced at least once, and 93.2 percent had no current source of income.

The war has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera. Israel closed the crossings to commercial goods again this month.

Ms. Shreim has asked for glasses, medical supplies and safe places for children to learn. “We have been left entirely alone,” she said.