Creation Entertainment has been criticized by the Deaf community for its handling of accessibility, drawing attention to a broader issue.
I guess I somehow became an investigative journalist.
For those of you at my convocation, you might have seen me texting furiously near the end of it - sorry, mom and dad! I had just received a news tip, alerting me to someone who said that they were being denied access to a fan convention on social media. I, too, have had my share of bad experiences not being able to go to events that I've really wanted to for access reasons, so I decided - okay, let's figure out the truth here. I agreed to do some research into how widespread the phenomena was, and after some talk with my favorite media outlet, The Establishment, we agreed that I would come out with a journalistic piece depending on what I had found out.
What I was not prepared for was the sheer torrent of stories flooding into my email inbox. I've done journalistic pieces before, and in every single one, I've actively had to hunt for interviews. Here, people were coming to me. After I had contacted a few people, gossip got out that I was writing this piece, and before I knew it, I had heartrending experience after experience, some of which spanned more than four thousand words. People had meticulously documented what they had gone through, sending me emails and screenshots. I spent hours counseling people through their experiences to make them feel validated; I was up until four AM in the morning, reading what people had written to me. The story I came up with was only a portion of these experiences; even without a word limit and without the obligation to be concise, I could not do justice to the depths of people's experiences with this company.
Believe me when I say that I tried very hard to dig for facts and angles that would be sympathetic to the company. I understand that accessibility is hard, and that people need space to learn and grow, and I respect that. I even went to extra lengths to get additional quotes from the company to expand on the limited PR statements they would release to me in their official interview, so I could expand upon their perspective and rationale. My job as a journalist is to look for balance. But I remind you that balance is not about looking for a place of artificial neutrality where it does not exist - it is about having the full scope of facts to inform the truth you do present. When you put the facts of both sides together, the truth is: only partially following the law is not an impressive claim to make. Giving additional perks and benefits to some disabled people, while still not offering them access, is not an equitable thing to do.
There will be some who claim that I am biased because I am deaf myself. But what I always say is: better to be upfront about your biases. Due to my own experiences, I did justice in writing this piece that I feel like many able-bodied people would not have. I did not portray my disabled interviewees as helpless, nor did I ignore the systematic issues behind the problem. I did not take the claims that disabled people are "extra" unsubstantiated, and dug into legal documents to verify the law. If I am biased, so is everyone else - but at least in this case, my biases are an asset in giving people the representation they need and giving claims the scrutiny they deserve.
I’ve discovered the perfect example to explain how able-bodied people view disability compared to how disabled people view ourselves.
Every once in a while, we get a viral news article about some “brilliant” young able-bodied inventor who, hearts aching for the plight of the poor, downtrodden disabled everywhere, and comes up with some magical piece of technology that purports to solve some limitation that they perceive that we have. Some recent examples include a team of undergraduates at the University of Washington who made gloves that can convert sign language to speech, or a high schooler who came up with a robot that beeps whenever an obstacle is detected, supposedly replacing seeing-eye dogs.
These inventions are always hailed by able-bodied people as life-saving and revolutionary. Except, they’re not. They’re half-baked ideas that only draw upon a superficial, surface understanding of what disability is like. The type of understanding that happens when a kid sits down and considers what it might be like to be disabled for all of four days (literally, in the latter example). Like, did these inventors bother to even google the actual language they were working with, and find out that only a proportion of ASL is in the hands and that you need the face and locus of signs to decode grammatical structure? Or that even if I had gloves that could magically translate my signs to speech, no one considered that hearing people are still talking to me and they’re also part of the equation in communication? Similarly, did these inventors bother to understand that seeing-eye dogs don’t just passively detect obstacles, they pull people away from them? Or think about what to do with stairs when you have a robot that is on wheels?
And then when actual disabled people like me bring up that these aren’t even the problems that I consider a big deal in my life, I get a lot of flame from able-bodied people. How dare I burst their bubble of inspiration under the teary-eyed realization that disabled people can finally be helped.
Then, I saw this brilliant invention created by a kid that actually has the disability that she made the invention for. It is a prosthetic arm that shoots fucking glitter. This shit is what we actually need. I never even knew that I had this problem in my life, and all of a sudden, the burning desire to have gloves that sprinkle glitter everywhere whenever I make the poofing motion of the sign “magic” entirely consumes my life. I will throw money at anyone who can give me finger attachments that shoot little flames and multi-colored lights whenever I make finger guns. I need this shit. I need it so badly I’m sobbing on the floor at the sheer emptiness of not being able to bedazzle people with lung-choking sparkly dust that they’ll never be able to wash off every time I converse with them.
tldr: Able-bodied people invent shit that solves no problems for anyone anywhere except for the strawman disabled people (played by able-bodied people) that appear for one episode in their soap operas and then vanish because they got hit by an ambulance they couldn’t hear. Disabled people invent actual things that real-life disabled people actually want because surprisingly, we don’t actually spend every waking moment weeping over our disabilities, and actually are capable of occasionally feeling joy and/or other human emotions.
If that doesn’t change your ‘hearts and minds,’ that’s on you.
I have been out of the writing circuit lately, but here is my latest piece! This year, I’m going to make a commitment to writing more. It’s hard for me to be out on the streets with my activism, so I’ve been thinking about what I can do to support the cause still. It’s true that protests tend to be a badge of honor for people, but the behind-the-scenes organizational work, and the labor put into raising morale and giving people argumentative tactics are still important. So here I am!
The pressure to be 'acceptable' is really pressure to be silent.
For me, there are many parallels between the myth of the “model minority” as applied to people of color, and the similar expectations that are applied to disabled people. This is also why I am concerned about how white people are constantly treated as the voice and face of disability when they lack this systematic perspective on oppression - disability movements urgently need to center the experiences of PoC.
In the latest news from Pokemon Go: yesterday, the Gym Leader for Team Valor, Candela, was officially revealed to be a dark-sinned PoC woman. (I'm on that team!) In less than a day, much fanart has come out of her, and I'm showing one of many examples of fanart in this vein. Does anyone else see a bit of a discrepancy here?
[Image Description: First image shows the official twitter release of the 3 gym leaders. From left to right: Candela, a dark-skinned woman wearing a white coat; Blanche, a white-haired person in a blue trench coat; and Spark, a blonde man in a black blazer and yellow hoodie. Second image shows a fanart of Candela; in this fanart, she is light-skinned with dyed red hair, and is wearing a red/yellow coat.]
Deaf students deserve better than this - they deserve full access
Friends, it would mean the world if you would share my story. This story needs to be heard in order to make all universities more accessible for those with disabilities, especially those who are deaf.
Some of you may recall the issues I had with Emory University during graduation. Essentially Emory denied me full access to my commencement ceremony as a deaf individual. I have published a piece with my experience and the result. I must admit I am disappointed how Emory University handled everything, but am looking forward to Emory’s growth. James Wagner, Emory’s president, personally told me that he “hopes improvements can be made for the future”. I have no doubts in this, but we need to fight together to make out voices heard.
Many sign language classes target the queer community. That's no coincidence.
I report upon the trend of queer- and trans-inclusive ASL classes in this piece. Really excited to be able to highlight these growing and important communities!
Accessibility on Paper, Accessibility in Practice.
Do you mean physically disabled at the beginning or do you mean all disabled people?
While my specific story relates to Deaf people, I think this is something all disabled people could potentially see themselves reflected in. You can consider my use of “disabled” here as an invitation for anyone who considers themselves disabled to apply these ideas to themselves as they see fit, if they find it helpful. For instance, I’ve seen some aneurotypical/neurodiverse, mentally ill or mad people talk about how they’re bothered by how neurotypical allies police the word “crazy” without trying to understand the connotative distinctions between various uses and contexts of the word. That is certainly a clear-cut place where these ideas wouldn’t be isolated just to physically disabled people. Thus, my stance is - if you find these ideas helpful to think about in your own context, go ahead and do so!
Is there somewhere online to learn sign language? I'd really like to learn but I'm worried about not finding the best source or finding something that's out of date. Is sign language a rapidly changing thing? (sorry if you've talked about this before!)
I would really recommend against learning sign languages online, especially if you’ve only been exposed to spoken languages before. The grammar and modularity of spatial languages is something completely different from that of spoken language, and no online source is going to provide you with a holistic overview of that. Even if you learn what sign means what word in English, there’s no good way to capture the way body language, expression, and syntax is deliberately exploited in ASL to convey grammar and meaning. Besides that, most good courses will integrate lessons on Deaf culture into the actual sign language course itself. Unlike many spoken languages, sign languages cannot be separated from their Deaf cultures if you intend to learn them in a culturally respectful way - the language is too strong of a central pillar of the culture.
My recommendation for you is to find a Deaf-run course in your community. This way, not only do you learn sign language properly - but you also support your local community members!
Three writers weigh in on why the 'Dancing with the Stars' champion's work matters.
This article is a roundtable of Deaf voices from The Establishment, including yours truly! To give you a little background, this roundtable is a response to a previous article published by The Establishment from a director of the Alexander Graham Bell Association, widely considered as a hate organization by the Deaf community (more context:http://www.theatlantic.com/…/understanding-deafness…/278527/;http://www.redeafined.com/…/oralism-and-irony-of-alexander-…).
While I am disappointed in The Establishment for remaining officially neutral in their introduction on this topic, I appreciate how they have worked to create space for Deaf people to respond to the piece. In particular, I value and cherish how the other Deaf voices in this piece have worked to support mine. Usually, I am hesitant to talk about my trauma around deafness, because I am aware that mainstream hearing society will use it to reinforce ideas that Deaf people are helpless and lesser. However, in a roundtable such as this, I can speak openly about my experiences, understanding that the context transforms my experiences into a small component of an incredibly rich and diverse mosiac, rather than the sole tale that Deaf people are defined by. This is the way it should be. The experiences of our fellow community members empower and enrich our individual stories.
To the AGBell Association: I lead by example. I am sorry that you are so threatened by the experiences of Deaf people, that you leap on any individual speaking positively about Deafness in the public to discredit them; to call them helpless and manipulative; to claim that they're pretending to be more disabled than they really are; to call them extremists; to lie about the politics of their activism; to victim-blame them for the barriers that they encounter. I am sorry that you feel so threatened by these stories, that you choose to focus on using your disproportionate power to silence them, rather than on telling your own stories. But your story is not the only story out there. You can choose to continue to tearing down experiences that are not yours, in your desperate bid to hold onto the power that has been historically yours through centuries of oppression and of being the solitary voice of the status quo. But know that the human tendency gravitates torwards storytelling, and in today's age, increasingly gravitates torwards diversity. You are fighting a battle that you will lose.
Hey, so a lot of people often ask me how I lipread so well. At the audiologist, I get no response for any words that they give me if they cover their lips; add in lipreading, and that shoots up to 94%. Of course, that’s not my real life rate for a lot of reasons, but still, lipreading is still something that I would consider myself pretty good at.
First, before I delve into the tips - remember that not every deaf or hard of hearing person has to lipread. I also know a lot of you get a tremendous amount of flack for not doing so, because popular culture teaches hearing people that we can all do so. Don’t feel compelled to give into these expectations if you don’t want to. Moreover, a lot of your lipreading skill is going to depend upon you as an individual person - visual acuity, sensory processing, attention, energy levels, and so forth will all factor into your ability. While I’m sure a lot of these aspects can be trained, I’m also under the impression that a good part of it is inherent - and it’s okay if you’re not good at this one specific particular task. Human beings are diverse, and you’re not judged on your ability to lipread. However, I do realize that this is still a good tool that some of you might want to pick up - so I want to talk about how I lipread in case that helps you.
First, contrary to what people believe - getting past the 30-40% standard rate for lipreading is less of a task of physical observation as it is a mental task. The key is to narrow your search space for what the syllables and sounds you see might fit into. If you have to figure out what they’re saying from all possible phrases in the English language, yeah, you’re going have a hard time. If you only have to figure out which of the few possible phrases they’re saying, then shit becomes a lot easier. I’m going to tell you a secret - the reason I score 94% with lipreading is because I’ve been taking hearing exams since I was a little kid, and I’m aware that audiologists use a pretty standardized list of terms in these tests: “Airplane”, “Cowboy”, “Birthday”, etc. So I match up what I see with what the most plausible candidate. You can do similar stuff in real life situations too. I’m sure you’re aware of this already. When you’re in a restaurant and you’re about to order, you know that the first thing the server is going to say is “Hi, how are you?” or “Can I take your order?” or “What would you like to drink?”
So in regards to reducing your search space, I’m sure these are already things that you already do socially if you’re deaf or hard-of-hearing. However, it might be helpful to see this as a formal list in relation to lipreading, so I’ll lay out some specific stuff:
Get the context. If you know what topic people are on, you can do word association to figure out what the most likely keywords for that topic are. Easiest way to get the context is just to go, “Sorry, what are we talking about?”
Realistically, hearing people get mad if you do that too often, so there’s other stuff you can do to get the context. See what they’re looking at or pointing to, for example. Figure out what’s most likely for the time and place you’re in. Piece it together from what you know about the person’s background and interests. Watch how other people in the conversation are saying. Read body language and expression to see what their emotions are on the topic, or what conversation cues they might be projecting. For example, people frequently tilt their head when asking questions.
If you have residual hearing or are hard-of-hearing, exploit that. Figure out what their tone is, if you can, for example. Hearing vowels or other hard sounds can sometimes help here too - the more pieces you have, the fewer that you have to plug in.
Grab easy-to-lipread phrases/words and expand from there. For example - if you lipread “tomorrow”, that gives a lot of clues into the topic (e.g. you know it might be an event), that you can start looking for other cues. This is a mental task that might not work for everyone and that might need a lot of practice, but what I do is that I keep a buffer of what has been said in my head, so I can go back to some words and decode them using words further down the line. Think of it as writing an exam: rather than going through it in the order it’s laid out, sometimes it’s more helpful to do easier questions first and then get to the harder questions later. Lipreading can work on the same principle.
Control the context yourself. Change the conversational topic, lead the conversation, or ask specific questions. Honestly, if you find yourself having to reach to this more than a few times in a conversation, you’re probably too lost. But realistically, hearing people get mad if you ask them to repeat themselves or ask for clarification too many times. They also get mad and start kicking you out of things if you don’t seem like you’re interested in the conversation. Between looking like a social boor and looking like you hate everyone in the conversation, sometimes it’s better to be the former. Remember: it’s about survival.
That covers the mental processing stuff, which I would consider to be the most important. It’s the most versatile, because conditions for lipreading vary so much - lighting, facial hair, etc. However, there are some physical things that you can also watch out for, so I’ll highlight those too. Compared to the contextual stuff, these have less of an impact on your lipreading, but it may still help to be consciously aware of these things if you weren’t previously.
Specifically for people you interact with regularly - figure out what their unique quirks are. For instance, a lot of lipreading videos will say that “van” and “ban” look the same on the lips. In reality, you might find that most people tend to touch their teeth to their bottom lips when making the “v” phoneme, but not the “b”. There’s a huge range of diversity in how people form their phonemes, and if you can figure out what their specific ticks are, that makes lipreading a lot easier. When I get to know someone, my ability to lipread them pretty much follows an upward trend with time.
Don’t concentrate just on the lips. When I lipread, a lot of the time, the lips are peripheral for me. The cheeks, cheekbones, and throat will in particular hold a lot of information, especially since these tend to accentuate the big sweeping sounds that are easily distinguishable and important. Your focus often isn’t on getting all of the subtleties, but just enough of the big sweeping motions. Think of it in terms of a signal-to-noise ratio. You can focus your attention on the small tiny motions, but realistically, they’re hard to discern and there’s not a lot encoded in there. You’re going to use a lot of energy just to get a tiny little bit more of information. It might make more sense for you to just focus on the big stuff and then use your attention and energy on mentally decoding it.
Similarly, don’t concentrate on phonemes as if they were individual units. It is their combination and conjunction that is important - if you’re trying to get every individual syllable, you’re probably spending way too much energy on the task. If you fingerspell fluently, you’ll know what I mean. Long words are great for this - not only do they tend to be important in that they encode a lot of context, but the longer they are, the more that narrows the “search space”, so to speak.
That’s all that comes to mind off the top of my head - I might have more to add later - but hopefully that’s helpful. If you follow all these tips, you probably still won’t be good at lipreading in the way that hearing people expect! But maybe it’ll be another tool in your belt. Or maybe not. Whatever works for you, though, own it.
free template for when you badmouth a marginalised community
[Community] extremists will respond to this essay in full force; they’re well-known for their intimidation and manipulation tactics. The last time I spoke out about [terrible opinion], I was spammed and bullied for weeks, but I refuse to be cowed.
The 'Dancing with the Stars' champion is dividing instead of bridging.
Warning: Linked article is crappy.
So, I have some critiques about this article. I'm going to say that I can see where the author is coming from in her perspective. I'm an oral (bilingual signing) Deaf person who was mainstreamed, and as a consequence, I can speak and lipread as well. It was definitely a complex experience for me. While I did feel socially isolated, I still had a lot of positive learning experiences, and I still value how it exposed me to and ignited a passion for English in me. And I do agree that sometimes, that complexity can get lost when Deaf people focus on the negative aspects of mainstreaming.
But at the same time, I'm disappointed in how the author completely ignores power imbalances in her characterization of the range of Deaf opinions. What she calls an "extreme" stance is really one informed by marginalization. I'm happy that she feels like she can integrate into and be fully accepted by hearing society, but the truth is that many people aren't as privileged as her in this respect. For one, I'm surprised that she suggests that Nyle's decision to use hearing aids is a deliberate one, when Nyle himself has said plenty of things to suggest that he doesn't have enough residual hearing - he can't hear cues on where sound is localized, and he can't hear bass in music, for instance. Hearing aids amplify - they can't do anything if you don't have any hearing to begin with. Then, the author suggests that Deaf people could integrate by choosing to lipread. But as someone with a 90% lipreading rate, I'm very strongly aware that this isn't the case for most people. I have strong visual acuity, mental processing skills, and attention skills that facilitate this. Most of my friends struggle to get 30-40%. Some have sensory processing disorders, poor eyesight, ADHD, or are just too pooped from the everyday fatigue and strain of having to think so much that they can't. That she characterizes the people who can't use the strategies that she uses as making poor decisions, undermines her call for recognition of diversity in Deaf discourse.
I think the author herself recognizes that there are these power imbalances, as she acknowledges that Deaf people who cannot reasonably rely upon spoken language have disproportionate barriers. But she does this in a very rhetorically sneaky way: she says, "Someone who only uses ASL, like Nyle, can’t interact with society without help from others." Not only does this infantilize Deaf people who rely upon ASL, but it implies that they are at fault by making them the active agent of the barriers. It's not the fault of other Deaf people that things aren't accessible for them.
Are there really complex things to say about the complexities of integrating so many different experiences and backgrounds into Deaf activism? Definitely. But this piece is not it. The rhetoric is inflammatory, characterizing Deaf people with less power than the author as "extremists" who are "intimidating and manipulating" her. And its characterization of their stances is very strange and distorted. For instance, the author would seem to suggest that culturally Deaf people only want Deaf kids to learn ASL - but if you look at Nyle's statements, and statements backing him up from Gallaudet (the largest Deaf university), they are very explicit about "bilingualism", which means ASL and English.
I don't fit entirely into the culturally Deaf mold either. But I'm still happy that Nyle is using his platform to advocate for the most marginalized Deaf people who don't fit into a hearing status quo and who suffer the most from it. Of course he should - it's his experience! As a person who can code-switch into passing for a hearing person, there are oppressions I have never experienced. I'm not going to crash into other Deaf people talking about these and go "but hey, what about me!" There are ways for my experience to be heard without tearing down other Deaf people.
New technology that turns sign language into speech misses the point.
The Establishment recently approached me about writing a piece on the new ASL-translating gloves that have been going viral all over the internet. This is what we ended up coming up with. I don’t speak for all Deaf people, but this article summarizes my issues with the gloves from my own perspective as a Deaf person. Hope you enjoy it!
As a bonus for those who follow me on tumblr, I want to mention a bit of insider information that I have about this technology that didn’t make it into the article since I focused upon the social aspects rather the technical and linguistic issues.
I have a friend who’s also a Deaf academic, and they mentioned that they actually peer-reviewed a paper ten years ago on this exact technology. Based on their feedback, the paper didn’t even get published in the end because of substantial technical and linguistic flaws.
So to reflect upon that: this is a technology that is a dinosaur in the tech world at 10 years old. And even 10 years ago, it did not hold any academic merit from a linguistic standpoint. What this suggests to me is that the students behind this technology have not done a sufficient literature review. Furthermore, it is clear that they skipped a key step in product development - collecting user requirements. Their usability testing does not incorporate any members of their target audience, and is based upon them using flawed ASL that they apparently learned on the spot. It’s like if you developed a Chinese-to-English speech translator, but based all your quantitative results upon you haphazardly reading Chinese pinyin. That’s not any indicator of how your technology will actually work in the field, and you’ve obviously now biased your results to an English accent and to artificially slowed-down language.
All I’m going to say is that these guys should be glad that I’m not the TA responsible for their marks.
New technology that turns sign language into speech misses the point.
The Establishment recently approached me about writing a piece on the new ASL-translating gloves that have been going viral all over the internet. This is what we ended up coming up with. I don't speak for all Deaf people, but this article summarizes my issues with the gloves from my own perspective as a Deaf person. Hope you enjoy it!
Accessibility on Paper, Accessibility in Practice.
I want to talk about an experience I’ve had lately, that demonstrates how easy it is for able-bodied people to project their own values on disabled people when advocating for accessibility.
So, I helped ASL interpretation at an anti-racism conference for an organization that I’m a board director for recently. The event set-up had three workshops or panels going on at all times simultaneously. Because of booking constraints (qualified interpretation for anti-oppressive events is incredibly hard to get in this city, even if you book months ahead of time due to the lack of interpreters relative to events), we only had a team of three interpreters throughout the day - thus, we were only able to cover one event with ASL interpretation at a time. I said, “okay, I’ll find a way to make it work.” I went into the Deaf community, engaged with folks, and solicited feedback on which events people wanted to go to. Then, I got the interpreters prep material for every session anyway since they were happy to be flexible about switching around events. On the day of, we had a sizable turn-out - in particular, I was really happy about having engaged a number of Deaf-queer POC elders from the community, as these events tend to skew younger. Between workshops, I checked in with everyone to make sure they were comfortable and happy going to planned workshops. Overall, it was a great day - I got a lot of gushing praise from all of the Deaf people who had attended, telling me about how valuable they found the day. They were really happy about how the interpretation was coordinated too - we specifically found queer interpreters with a background in anti-oppressive interpretation, got them all of the prep they needed to do justice to the events, and managed the physical set-up in thoughtful ways so Deaf people were front-and-center in spaces.
Everyone went home happy. The end. Story over, right?
Not quite.It turns out that we also got some accessibility feedback from hearing people. And they were mad at us - because, why didn’t we have ASL interpretation at every single event? How could we claim to value accessibility if we didn’t?
This is a bit of a fucked up dynamic to me. I get that hearing people are accustomed to their ability to be in any space at any time, because the world is designed for them. And I get that they’re eager to extend that privilege to Deaf people. But at the same time - we don’t live in an ideal world. We don’t live in a world where Deaf people are on equal social standing as hearing people. Where resources are unlimited. Where Deaf people are not a marginalized minority.
For one, we need to acknowledge that interpreters are an accommodation, not a radical upheaval of a space. Even if your event has interpretation, it’s still by default, a hearing space. Physical accessibility is not the only thing that needs to be considered - social environment does as well. The conference was small - at times, there were only half a dozen Deaf people. If all of the Deaf folks you knew wanted to go to one workshop, not a lot of people would have felt comfortable splintering off from the group to attend the other - which would have entailed going to a space where you shared little in common with everyone else in it, where you could not communicate directly with anyone and had to rely upon the interpreter to convey your meaning, where you were the only person sitting right up at the front bright as visible, where you had no one to engage with after the event about what you learned or what you liked because hearing people are so shitty about communicating with Deaf people in non-structured ways that aren’t patronizing. So this is the way we’ve adapted, at least in my local community - that’s why I said it was fine for us to work with the interpretation set up we had, and that’s why it was. Hearing people may value their ability to make individual decisions, but Deaf people value their ability to build collective consensus and support their fellow community members.
But for two, and this is something I see often these days - we seriously need to address the issue of tokenism. Too frequently, I hear of events where interpreters were present, but not a single Deaf person attended. And I’m incredibly dismayed to hear this, on a number of levels.
First, I’m angry at the faux accessibility going on in certain spaces. The interpreter, standing there, interpreting for no one, is simply a way for hearing people to pat themselves on the back about being inclusive, while not actually doing anything. Hiring interpretation is just the first step. What did you do to address social power imbalances in your space? How did you conduct outreach? In some cases, I’ve heard of events that required you to book tickets over the phone - but had ASL interpretation. The fact is, interpretation is just one aspect of accessibility. Increasingly, I see it become a stand-in for having Deaf people in the space, while not really having Deaf people in the space. The next time you see an interpreter signing at an anti-oppressive, maybe check to see if they’re actually signing to anyone in particular, or just open air.
But two, I previously alluded to this - but ASL interpretation requires manpower, and it’s woefully short in my city. You have to book interpretation months and months ahead of time in some cases, which really does not make things flexible for Deaf people - I have also had the experience of wanting to go somewhere on a short notice, and then having to scramble to find interpreters. And I know of a number of Deaf students who are still on the waiting list for academic interpretation - my own interpreter has confessed to me about feeling guilty for having to turn down some jobs because she’s overwhelmed. If there’s no need for interpretation, why are you booking it? Why are you making this situation so much more difficult for Deaf people, just so hearing people at your event can feel better about the situation? And beyond that, let’s be honest - it’s a fucking waste of money. Especially if you’re a small grassroots organization, like many of these organizations are. In no small way, it emerges from the hearing people pressuring them to arrange interpretation - but then leaving it at that and not asking them to make a vlog or actually asking any Deaf people if they’re actually gonna go.
I also received another accessibility complaint from a hearing people that illustrates this mentality. And they complained that we didn’t get PoC interpreters for the event. It would have been nice to! But the thing is - there are only 3 PoC interpreters in the entire city! And only one has the experience to interpret an event of this level since the other two are relatively new! And we actually did have her for one morning session, because that was the only time she was available! I agree that in the long term, we need to be talking about the lack of PoC interpreters - but interpreters don’t just materialize out of nowhere. And I feel like hearing people just don’t understand this. They have such an incredibly entitled mentality when it comes to coordinating accessibility - they think it’s easy, they think no compromises have to be made, they think it’s something that just occurs on demand.
To rub salt into the wound - the Deaf PoC at the event were also barred from resources because of the white interpreters because people could not understand that getting PoC interpreters was something that was just not physically possible as opposed to a failing in event organizing. At the end of the day, there was a Closed BIPOC discussion group. So the Deaf PoC had to enter while the white interpreters stood outside of the room, not knowing a single thing that was going on and being said about us, while the entire hearing group discussed and voted on whether they could allow white interpreters into the closed space.
Overall, it may be so intuitive for hearing people to have interpreters at every single possible option because they prioritize their ability to be anywhere at any given time - but if you are a hearing person who’s saying the interpretation is bad when none of the Deaf people signed up for the event had anything even remotely along that lines, it’s time to consider that there might be certain things that you’re missing.
