Deaf is Worlds Gain
hello
everyone i’m here to
talk about how deaf people
are the world’s game and i’d like to
first clarify
what i mean when i use the word deaf as
an
identifier right we live in a majority
hearing world and identify as deaf
people
we are a community that has
people with many identities
so a person might be deaf but they have
other intersections
of a variety of identities and for
today’s talk
i’m going to talk about the uh larger
identity of being deaf
and how that benefits our world
now we as deaf people we have been on
this earth over
10 000 years there are
over 400 types of deaf genes
this is not new and there i believe
is a reason we’re here
so if you see the picture that i’m
showing
take a look and see if you can
identify who is deaf and who can hear
i will talk about that later toward the
end of my talk
so i’d like to start talking about how
we
benefit the world if we think about film
and media
today we are addicted to
film and media social media etc
and back in 1924 actually a
jewish deaf gentleman who lived in
germany
actually invented what we know today as
the television
his name was zeitlin
that was his last name and he was the
young age
of 17. if you can imagine that a 17 year
old
invented what we know today as
television
and i think there’s a nice twist one of
our major brands is
zenith right which was invented by
zeitlin so when we think about films
also what we know today as movies
started
at as a very different medium
it was silent films and deaf people
back in that time realized very quickly
the value that that medium provided for
disseminating information
a gentleman we know in our deaf
community by the name of george
vettitz is the father of
using film to get information out to the
community
from there those of you who could hear
people in in that time
started to develop ways to add sound and
now
film is everywhere we also
now have video logs that started
as blogs right when the internet first
started
a lot of people used that as a medium to
get information out
and deaf people very quickly wanted to
use
video as ways to get information out so
deaf people first launched the idea of
video logs and we now
see it everywhere we have deaf people to
thank for that as well
so taking a look at that photo
of a football huddle
we see football many times in our lives
right
when we watch the kansas city chiefs
the football huddle is something that’s
a very
basic part of football well it was
invented in washington dc
at gallaudet university which is the
world’s only
liberal arts deaf university for deaf
hard of hearing children who have deaf
adults
and hearing children
as well so people who can hear
who have deaf adult deaf parents etc
are able to attend this university and
so at this university
when they were playing football
when there was the realization that the
other team
could see what they were talking about
and
in in discussing their plays they came
up with the concept of a
huddle so that took fire
thank you to paul hubbard the first
football player
who invented the idea of huddling
together
so this demonstrates ways that deaf
people
navigate the world we in large part have
a visual orientation
so a number of ways that spaces are
designed in our uh photo
phono-centric or audio-centric
environment we have adjusted based on
our own world experience
for example
one way that that we are able to
navigate
the world when we are driving
we are able to communicate with other
drivers on the road
through our windows uh being that
as long as we both understand sign
language so when i see another deaf
driver
we can communicate with with each other
so having those
clear windows as ways to communicate
is key for us when we are
in hallways or in other
areas of buildings oftentimes those
spaces are narrow which make it
difficult for us to communicate
and are not only barriers for us as deaf
people but
mothers or parents having uh deaf vape
or babies in strollers
or people who are in larger groups
trying to discuss or people who might be
in wheelchairs
or moving furniture with carts or
dollies
there are a number of examples where
that could create a barrier
so we often will then have larger
hallways
in deaf spaces we can look at the
concept of universal design
and looking at elevators for example
that
the concept of how elevators apply to
universal design and benefit
everyone even though they weren’t
originally
invented for that purpose and we can
look at the ways that closed captioning
or captioning services
benefit all of us if we take a universal
design
approach because not only deaf people
will benefit
but other people who are losing their
hearing or who
who are in noisy environment such as
bars or
other places where there is competing
noise
so text-based communication can be for
everyone
not just for uh deaf people
um other kinds of things that we see as
accommodation
or like the elevator are not only for
people who are unable to
go upstairs but for everyone
another area that i think deaf space
benefits to the world is
the way that we have our interior
building so oftentimes if you might
remember your elementary school
had glossy paint and
fluorescent lighting that hurt your eyes
and caused tremendous eye fatigue
oftentimes in deaf spaces we use a flat
paint or a matte finish and those
fluorescent lights
we do not use we use other more
gentle forms of life of lighting so
we can focus on learning we see that
more and more schools are also making
those adjustments
so that’s another example of universal
design
we can look at public announcements
right that are
typically given over some sort of a
system where everybody hears those
public announcements
but when people are in noisy
environments they may not be able to
hear those announcements on those pa
systems so using text-based
communications to provide public
announcements would benefit
everyone not only the deaf community
people who can hear would also
appreciate that information
it will allow for clarity of the
information and repetition of the
information so that’s another way that
the deaf way of being can contribute to
our world
there are other examples of how i think
we are ahead
of the game uh more and more as people
are
introspective about their identities
we specifically look at the gender
continuum and
folks who are beginning to identify as
non-binary
as opposed to only uh being male or
female
our language particularly english
language
is very limiting in pronoun use right
and we’re having to look at
ways to use our language and different
pronoun usage
american sign language is already ahead
of that game we do not have gender-based
pronouns
we use indexing as a way to
demonstrate pronouns and that would
include the entire
continuum of gender identity so
there is no adjustment we have to make
when it comes to
referring to people and how they
identify
so there’s another gain for our world
so the the recent slide that i showed
you might have noticed
there was a deaf baby and a hearing baby
and it’s titled the greatest irony
because
it demonstrates the fact that
while sign language was invented by deaf
people
used by deaf people and by the way there
are 300
plus signed languages in the world
that have been in the world and used
by deaf people and by
people who can hear who use the language
to relate with and interact with deaf
people
absolutely hearing people use this sign
language
however the irony is that
since the industrial revolution probably
around the 1800s
there has been more and more of a shift
as seeing sign language as a
deficit or a problem that exists
as a temporary fix
or band-aid for example
in that illustration that i just showed
you it showed a hearing baby with the
sign of
what we know as i love you right with a
smile on its face
because science has shown right in
infants their vocal cords and
they don’t nec they don’t yet have the
ability to produce
sounds and this can cause temper
tantrums
often and a great deal of frustration
because they’re unable to express
themselves
so baby sign has been
an approach to that in teaching infants
sign
however and those babies don’t
experience the terrible twos right
because they are having sign
deaf babies who are exposed to sign
language
also have that experience of being able
to express themselves
sign has also been given as a supplement
or a resource to children who are
have disabilities of sorts and unable to
express themselves
and the irony is that deaf babies who
are born
often to hearing parents and the hearing
parents
are surprised by this they’re not
informed about what
what to do are often advised by the
medical professionals that they should
not
sign that they should not teach their
infant sign language that they should
teach them to speak
and that comes from the idea of seeing
sign language and being deaf
as a deficit so that’s an irony that
hearing babies are offered this as a
resource while deaf babies are deprived
of their birthright
we can also look at colleges and
universities
that teach american sign language
and colleges and universities that teach
languages
as such as french spanish or other
modern languages
tend to have departments such as foreign
language department
or language studies or something that
houses
their languages well american sign
language
is not housed in those departments it’s
typically
housed in special education speech and
language hearing sciences
or communication disorders as opposed to
being housed in
foreign language departments again that
demonstrates
a deficit view of sign language which is
the opposite
of how we see our rich language
we also can take a look at ways that
deaf children
are educated in our society
there are mainstream environments that
have
deaf programs as well as deaf
residential schools
and many of those do not have language
asl instruction or curriculum
as part of their educational environment
while their hearing peers
have the luxury of getting language
classes in their own native
language as well as taking a foreign
language such as american sign language
deaf children themselves that this is
their native language do not have that
luxury of having a curriculum
for their own language to strengthen
their own language so there’s yet
another irony
so that recent slide i really
say is the antithesis to my thesis
right it shows this deficit model
that of how we are looked at as a deaf
people
right this deaf elephant being in the
room
that uh tries to force us to be
hearing tries to force us to change who
we are
there is about 75
of children this is a rough estimate
that have
experienced language deprivation or
severe
language delay so they are not
kindergarten ready
when they arrive to that age their
cognitive
abilities their social emotional
abilities
and their self-identity is truly
lacking and suffering
this creates a larger gap every year
for deaf children as they progress in
their
school and education because they are
denied the right
to sign typically it’s when parents
notice these gaps and these delays
by the time the child is seven or eight
that they
start to expose them to sign language
and it is too late by that time
there’s a small percentage of children
who are still able to succeed
but many of them don’t because they have
missed that language window
so this brings me back to my first
photograph
right with the two with the people
showing it’s the female
with her hand showing her ring
who’s deaf and the male with curly hair
and glasses who is hearing
and this just is a perfect example of
showing how
human biodiversity can exist
deaf people are a cultural linguistic
minority
we are people too thank you all for your
attention this evening