🦻🧏♀️Deaf Problems With Online Learning📒✏️
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to bag on my professors or school, but since we’ve gone online in March, literally none of this has been changed. I 100% understand the beginning of this pandemic was chaos, accessiblity wasn’t a top priority... but it’s been 8 months. I’d consider myself a relatively good student, but in the past 8 months I’ve been struggling due to things far outside my control, the most people don’t recognize:
Auto generated captions on Zoom/Microsoft teams do exist, but they’re essentially worthless. (Unless today in my astronomy course the professor really said “Indiana AIDS North 103 dungarees blanket Masarati”)
Even if the professor is staring straight into the camera, reading lips is near impossible on a video call.
I have Phonak hearing aids, they’re Bluetooth enabled (as they freaking should be at a a whopping $5,500), so I can use them with my phone, but they won’t connect to my school laptop.
I can use headphones over my hearing aids, but if they aren’t positioned *just* right so nothing is touching the receiver, the go “SCREEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHCCCHHH” which is not only mind numbing, but also defeats the purpose.
Tying to understand what’s going on in class, taking notes, and managing the constant feedback using headphones, I never answer in class anymore. Also I never answer in class because my deaf accent seems 10000% worse on camera. I have to repeat myself like three times for the professor to eventually just say ‘chat me’.
also since the beginning of this, hearing aid battery prices have SKYROCKETED. I don’t know why, maybe just because all medical supplies have gone up in price?
And then there’s masks. I 100% support wearing masks. You all need to wear masks, but it’s rough on the deaf folks, as we can’t read lips and sound is muffled.
Also when I wear a mask, it’s always weird with my hearing aids, either with the strap under or over.
This is kinda funny, but like half the time I take my mask off I fling one or both of my hearing aids off no matter how hard I try 😪 I really hit my dog in the face with an airborn Phonak the other day 😔😔
