Equal Access for Deaf Pagan

Deaf Pagan is on my blogroll, but she is more than a link on the page. She’s a wiccan (no, not a witch with a big green nose and a pointy hat; she watches and gets life lessons from nature), and she’s deaf. She’s also smart, funny, and writes a good blog.

Now she and a group of other deaf (as well as hearing) people are on a real roll–asking for equal communication access. I saw Deaf Pundit’s video on her blog and it made me think. What I loved about the video is that it didn’t tell me what to do. . .it made me think. Which is a lot harder than simply writing a check or signing a petition. How can I create equal hearing access? And what does that mean?

When I had knee surgery, I began to notice how inconvenient it was to walk with a cane–handicapped stalls are always at the far end of the ladies’ room. After leaving the stall, there was no place to put the cane at the sink. It would fall on the floor and I couldn’t bend to pick it up. The paper towels or hand dryer is never near the sink, it requires walking–for me that meant grabbing my cane with wet hands and walking to a air-blower, holding my wet cane underneath the nozzle until the metal cane was too hot to touch. I also had to be careful of all the water dripped on the floor. Many times, my cane slipped and pain shot through my leg. Ladies’ rooms had been designed my fast-moving, non-handicapped people, and it showed.

The same mistake is made when engineers write training manuals for the very thing they invented. The common person can’t understand the manual. There are huge portions of my cell phone I don’t use because I can’t understand how to activate the function. (When I looked up the mysterious icon “1X” in the instruction book, the entire entry said, “You have 1X service.” What was I supposed to make of that?) Being deaf works the same way–the deaf live in a hearing world, which was not designed for them. Equal hearing access means giving the deaf the same communication ease we take for granted.

In my writing classes, I talk about the importance of reaching your audience. We discuss what that means–how can you speak so that your audience can hear you, know what you mean, agree with you, understand you? For me that is equal communication access.

If you audience is deaf, you can pretend they aren’t there–after all, they have a translator, right? But you can also invent exercises that include them–in my case, I invented an exercise that included using text messages, sharing written exercises using linked computers or email, and bringing in the translator as part of the learning experience.

We often think of Italian or French as a language for lovers, and German as a good language for precision, but sign language is the language of concept communication. You can spell words, of course, but there are also gestures for entire concepts–time, emotions, completion, access. And as I learned from signing class, there are dialects. I still confuse the California sign for “computer” with the Southern sign for “church.” It’s made for some interesting misunderstanding about what I was doing on Sunday morning.

Blogs are a great equalizer with the deaf, and I can communicate with Deaf Pagan via email and forget she is deaf. Which sounds like a good idea, but I actually want to remember she is deaf, with different needs, many of which I can bridge. But the instant she leaves her house, she is an outsider in a hearing world. Want to provide equal communication access for the deaf? Here are suggestions from the expert. Now you know.

Resources: Want to learn some sign language? Try the ASL University, you can learn a lot there, and it’s free unless you need continuing education units.
See videos of words and letters. Searchable on the ASL Browser.
Learn how to sign/sing hymns in ALS.
Watch the video of “Change a Heart, Change the World,” in sign language.

Image: library.thinkquest.com 

–Quinn McDonald hears; she wishes she understood more. She teaches communication and journal writing. See her work at QuinnCreative.com     (c)2007 All rights reserved.