51
Amy
Since the day I was born, I have always lived in two worlds: a hearing world and a Deaf world. What is that like? How do Deaf people function and survive in two worlds, especially the hearing world? Can they do it? Yes!
For a Deaf person living in the hearing world, each day is like navigating through an asteroid belt composed of hearing people. Every day in the hearing world, we Deaf have to pass through and cross the orbits of hearing people. There is no way to avoid it. Many hearing people do not understand what Deaf people are capable of doing, and fewer yet understand our language, ASL, or our Deaf culture.
Traveling through the hearing world means I must be careful; colliding with an asteroid (a hearing person) can be painful to my feelings. I am an adult, and yet sometimes I am treated as if I need help, as if I were not smart. Worse than this is when I can read a hearing person’s mind by their actions, or see pity in their eyes. I know they are thinking, “Oh, I am sorry you can’t hear,” or “It’s too bad that you are deaf.” Sometimes I wish I could tell them, “I’m sorry you can hear.”
What is the main difference between our worlds? The language. In the Deaf world, everyone is moving their hands; in the hearing world, everyone is moving their lips. For me, the easiest way to communicate is with my hands, but that will not work in the hearing world.
The communication barrier is the most enormous asteroid Deaf people navigate when living in two worlds. In my daily life, I encounter many hearing people in the mall, grocery store, and convenience shops. These situations are generally easy, and I do not need the services of an ASL interpreter, because I can make a gesture, point to what I want, or use a Deaf person’s always handy items: a paper and pen.
Writing requests may confuse hearing people; they are not sure what to do. For example, at a restaurant, once food servers discover I am Deaf, often they talk louder. I can tell they are shouting by the way their mouth opens wide, but it does not change my inability to hear. On other occasions when I have gestured that I need a paper and pen, the restaurant server has stood there confused. I had to repeat the gesture of my fingers writing on my hand several times before the server brought me paper so I could write down what I wanted to order. This may be frustrating, but I don’t need an interpreter when I dine out with friends or for normal shopping. Deaf people will always have a communication barrier with the hearing world, but in these circumstances, we can deal with it and easily solve it.
Sometimes when hearing people see a group of Deaf people signing, they make fun of us by making different gestures at us with their hands. My friends and I will then look at them, and make mouth movements, like “blah, blah, blah,” then the hearing people stop making fun of us and leave us alone. One time a group would not stop. They made more gestures, so we made more mouth movements, after awhile we knew we were just teasing each other, so we did not get upset or hurt. We thought it was funny. It was like a competition. Guess what? We won!
The only time I require an ASL interpreter is for events or meetings where I must understand exactly what is being said, such as business workshops, a legal meeting, banking business, a doctor’s appointment, or at a drama. The main advantage of having an interpreter in these circumstances is that I can express my comments and questions in my own language, ASL, through an interpreter, and receive answers in a language I understand. The interpreter makes the meeting easy for the hearing person also. Indeed, we save a lot of time, and of course, many trees do not need to be chopped down to make all that paper.
Another asteroid Deaf people must cope with is communications at their work sites. Many devices are available that allow the Deaf to communicate easily, but sometimes employers do not have the devices available. Employers are required to provide such devices, but until an agreement can be reached on obtaining them, the Deaf worker may be frustrated.
A serious problem for Deaf people is the lack of visual messages and warnings. Many TV stations are getting better about putting weather warnings as a visual, not just a spoken announcement, which is helpful, but more needs to be done. In public buildings, Deaf people have no way to know about fire or other hazards, unless we watch other people.
One of the worst places for me and other Deaf people is the airport. When a flight is changed or delayed, we don’t know what is going on, because most airline announcements are said over a microphone. This has happened several times to me, and I figured out what had occurred by looking at the other passengers’ body language and facial expression, which were angry, or reflected, “What the heck is happening?”
One time I was flying home from Minneapolis. I was very tired and in a rush to get home. The flight was changed, and I missed it. I was so pissed off that I had to spend the night at a hotel. Because of this, I usually ask the airline staff several times through paper and pen if I am at the right gate. I am sure these problems occur with other forms of transportation also. This problem could be eliminated if airports and other transportation centers used computer-generated signs, instead of just audio announcements, so Deaf people could see important messages.
Deaf people miss most commercial messages on TV because they are not captioned, which is okay sometimes, and of course we miss all the information that is on the radio. Once John told me that the price of gasoline would be cheaper the next day, and for that day only.
I asked, “How do you know that?”
And he replied, “I heard it on the radio when I was driving home.”
Lucky for me he told me, as I saved money, but without him telling me, I would never have known. There are many other places and occasions where Deaf people have limited understanding, but I manage to survive, and so do most other Deaf people.
While I live in two worlds, Deaf and hearing, most hearing people have never experienced my Deaf world. A hearing person attending a Deaf function will feel very left out (as I often do at hearing events) if they do not know ASL or have an interpreter with them. In the Deaf world, ASL allows me to communicate with ease, have free expression, and not be misunderstood. All our hands are moving nonstop. Our conversations are very animated. We have slang and dialects, just as the hearing world does. We discuss friends, family, work, and sports. In a group of Deaf people, I feel calm and peaceful. I have no limitations to my conversations, who I can talk to, and what I can say.
Our Deaf events are very visual. At meetings, we use signs and bulletin boards for information and directions. Hearing people may think our world is silent, but they are wrong. Our world is noisy too. Deaf people make sounds, such as stomping on the floor or pounding on a table to get someone’s attentions. Others use their voice to yell an action. If someone is telling a story about a car accident, when they get to the part about the cars bumping each other, they might yell to make a noise. The sound is silent to us, but very loud in our Deaf environment.
A topic of interest to Deaf people is new technological advances that will help us. In the past twenty-five years, many devices have been invented that are useful to the Deaf and other handicapped people. These devices let Deaf people understand television programs, shop online, communicate over the telephone, and thus be more independent. Deaf adults no longer have to rely on their hearing children to make doctor appointments or make travel arrangements.
When I was a child, there were no closed captions on TV. Of course, I watched TV, but I had to use my imagination to make up a story about what was happening. If I was at home, my brother or mother would sometimes tell me what the program was about, not every detail, but at least I knew something. At residential school, my friends and I discussed what the people on TV might be talking about. Then in 1980, when I was eleven, closed-caption devices came on the market and Mother bought one.
The first closed-caption devices were huge, ugly brown boxes manufactured by Sears. I did not care about the beauty of the device, because I was thrilled I could understand the TV shows. Many of the shows I watched when I was younger were now being shown as reruns. I discovered I had a huge imagination. The programs were not like I had imaged at all! In many cases, what I imagined was better.
Since the captioning devices were expensive, Deaf had to pay more than hearing people just to watch the news and other programs. At first, very few programs had captions, and I would get pissed off when the captions were garbled or scrambled. Soon more and more programs had captions. In the 1990s, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that all TVs manufactured must have the ability to receive closed captions. This was a real blessing to Deaf people. Now I could not live without closed captions. But what has happened to my imagination? I still have it, but use it for other things, not for watching TV.
Until 1960, Deaf had to ask a hearing person to make telephone calls for them. This was a slow process, and invaded the deaf person’s privacy. Hearing children born to deaf parents often became interpreters for their parents as they got older, and made telephone calls for them, but now with all the technology available to the deaf this is not really necessary. After the invention of the teletypewriter (TTY) or telecommunications device for the Deaf, as it is also called, all this changed. The first TTY I saw was a huge, ugly green machine. Later the machines were much smaller. A TTY allows a deaf, hard of hearing, or a speech-impaired person to use the telephone. Callers type messages back and forth to one another. One disadvantage is that both people on the telephone call, even if one is hearing, must have a TTY. Also, both people cannot type messages at the same time, so the conversations are slow.
At one time, Mother, John, and I owned TTYs. It was a great way to communicate, even though it was slow because I had to wait until the other person stopped typing, even if I knew that they were telling me, before I could begin typing. I could not interrupt our typed conversation like a hearing person can on the telephone by saying, “I know what you are talking about.” In addition, I could only call people who had a TTY, not any other places.
In the 1990s, as result of the Americans with Disabilities Act, telephone relay service was started. This service is supported by a small charge on everyone’s telephone bill. Check your bill; you are probably paying four or five cents a month so Deaf people can have relay operators. The relay service allowed Deaf people to call hearing people who do not have a TTY and vice versa. An operator, who can hear, relays the message to the Deaf on the TTY, and then reads and speaks the message the Deaf person has typed to the hearing person. This method of communication is still used, but most Deaf people today prefer the video relay service (VRS) to call hearing people and Video Phone (VP) to call deaf people, which became available after the year 2000.
The VRS equipment is free, one per each Deaf household. All you need to do is contact a company that provides VRS equipment and have a high speed internet connection at home. The company will install the equipment for you. A VRS caller uses a television or a computer with a video camera to contact a VRS communication assistant (CA) who knows ASL. The CA places the telephone call. If the call is to a hearing person, the CA interprets between the Deaf person and hearing person. If the call is to another Deaf person, I don’t contact the CA but call directly to a Deaf person.
VRS is in high demand by Deaf, because it allows us to express our conversations in our own language, ASL. For many Deaf people, ASL is their first and true language, so it is a much easier way to communicate than by typing messages. Since the Deaf watch the telephone conversation on a video monitor, VRS allows Deaf people to fully express themselves through facial expressions and body language, which we cannot do with text. Also, both parties can talk or sign at the same time, like hearing people do on a telephone conversation, so calls do not take as long as they do on a TTY.
Other devices Deaf people use to adapt to the hearing world are lighted, flashing doorbells and telephone alerts. There are baby crying alert devices for Deaf parents who have either a deaf or hearing baby. A light alerts the mother or father that the baby is crying in the other room. That’s another good way for Deaf people to be independent and raise their family without any assistance from hearing people. And in case you wonder, hearing children with Deaf parents usually have no problem learning to speak, because most of the time there are other family members who hear and speak, such as grandparents, uncles, friends, neighbors, or siblings. And of course they can hear voices on the TV and radio.
These are the most common devices used in the Deaf world. But there are many other devices Deaf people can purchase that will fit their lifestyle and needs at home or at work. Deaf alarm clocks are either a light that flashes or a device that vibrates under your pillow. I used to have a vibrating alarm clock, but it really shook and scared me when it vibrated, so I switched to a flashing lamp so I can dream in peace and not be scared when I wake up. These simple devices mean I don’t have to rely on hearing people, and I can be responsible for my daily life.
All of these devices can be very costly or free. It depends on the assistance programs in each state. Some states will provide a deaf person a voucher with a limited amount of money, which Nebraska does. Even with the voucher, I still had to spend extra money from my pocket, because the voucher was limited to certain devices. I am not complaining, the voucher was at least some help to me and other Deaf people who used it.
Just like hearing people, deaf people drive. While we cannot hear sirens, we watch for them. Our insurance does not cost any more than for hearing drivers. In Louisiana where my mother lives, it is possible to get a license plate for your car that indicates you are deaf, but I do not want that, because dishonest people could follow me and know where I live. Then they could rob my house while I am sleeping since they know I am deaf. Some deaf people have information on their drivers’ license about their deafness, but not on their license plate. This is safer.
Deaf people can be very independent and are able to do most things on their own without the help of hearing people. Compared to fifty years ago, many hearing people thought that Deaf people couldn’t do anything. Not even drive a car, raise a family, or attend school to learn to read and write. Naturally, through the years Deaf people fought for their rights and wanted to be equal with hearing people. Deaf people want equal insurance rates on our cars, equal salaries, closed captions on TV, and telephone access. We are no difference than hearing people, only our ears are silent.
Deaf people will always have to live in two worlds, but thanks to new technologies, we can do more on our own than in the past. We are very independent and able to adapt in the hearing world. I wonder, could hearing people survive in my Deaf world?!?