Deaf People Don’t Need New Communication Tools — Everyone Else Does
Even if you don’t follow engineering news, you might have heard about the two University of Washington undergraduates who just won the Lemelson-MIT student prize. The video of their invention, gloves that they say can translate sign language into speech, has been popular on social media; as a Deaf person, I’ve had to watch as it worms its way through the Facebook walls of all of my hearing friends. They tag it with incredible claims: This technology will finally bridge a communication gap. It will revolutionize the lives of Deaf people. It will save us from our lives of suffering and solitude.
For these hearing friends, I only have one question: Why does everything in our society have to cater to you?
It seems like the only way a Deaf person can be taken seriously is if we convert our words to a spoken form. To access essential government services, we need to use a relay service. To attend important business meetings, we need to bring an interpreter. When I needed to renew my Internet plan, I had to get my sister to call for me, because the Internet company, of all places, does not accept email. A few weeks ago, I needed an ambulance, so I had to IM a friend to phone one for me.
Not only do we need to find a way to turn our ideas to speech, but it has to be perfect speech, too. I know more than a few Deaf people who can vocalize, but choose not to do so, because they get mocked, judged, and patronized for having a “Deaf accent.”
When I tell these stories to hearing people, they reach a different conclusion than me. To them, these ideas reinforce the need for technologies like these gloves. If Deaf people could speak, that would resolve these access issues, right? But they never seem to question the premise. They take for granted that it’s spoken language or bust.
To me, this reveals a tremendous lack of imagination from hearing people on how communication actually works. As Deaf people navigating a hearing society, we tend to pick up on all sorts of strategies to communicate with the non-signing hearing people around us. We tote around pens and notepads. We gesture. We use body language. We send emails. We ask for your texting number and instant messaging handles (I have a friend who holds mixed hearing/Deaf parties by asking people to bring devices to join a group chat). We mouth words and lipread. We draw pictures. We work to meet you in the middle over and over again. Many of us wish you could learn sign language, but we know that’s not always a realistic expectation. But that’s okay — communication is about the message and the people, not the medium. We’ll get it to you, be it by cargo ship, bicycle, jet, or paper airplane.
But many hearing people, having grown up in a society that privileges the spoken word, have never experienced the need to send a message in any medium but their own. (They’re capable of writing, of course, but that’s seen as a stopgap; you’ll often hear them say “if you want to really communicate, pick up the phone or talk in person!”) Because they never end up practicing and developing many communication strategies outside of spoken language, they mistake their own inexperience as evidence that these mediums are objectively inferior.
This attitude is apparent in their interactions with Deaf people. They reject the idea that signed languages are valid and complex. When we gesture, they refuse to try to understand us. When we whip out the pen and paper, they complain it takes too long. They shoot down each and every vehicle we send in trying to get a message across with some flimsy excuse to cover their insecurity. But their one and only preferred option is a non-negotiable for us. Eventually, we run out of options, or more likely, they run out of patience. We go and find an interpreter. Or we just give up.
“Deaf people are viewed as a liability in terms of communication, when in reality, we are the experts.”
The ironic part of all of this to me is that after this type of interaction, the hearing person usually ends up pitying me — because I am not proficient at the one solitary communication strategy that they value above all the other options. Deaf people are viewed as a liability in terms of communication, when in reality, the opposite is true. We are the experts at communication. From living in a society that constantly demands observation and improvisation of us, we have learned how to communicate in countless ways.
From my perspective, it is very strange that so many hearing people willingly overlook the vast and rich myriad of ways through which human beings can connect with each other. I always joke that if we ever make contact with an alien species, we need to send an all-Deaf team of astronauts. My friends and I occasionally get together to play a version of charades where we have to express concepts using facial expressions alone, with our hands tied behind our backs — no gestures, because for us, that would be too easy. We have no problem conveying ideas like “golden parachute,” “Plants vs. Zombies,” and the full address for the dentist’s office in “Finding Nemo.” In contrast, the most common reaction I get when revealing I’m Deaf to a hearing person is, “how the fuck are we going to communicate?”
My radical suggestion to hearing people who are concerned with access issues for Deaf people is that you are casting the problem wrong. Perhaps the gap in communication does not stem from an inherent limitation in Deaf people, but from an attitude problem in hearing people. I get why this is a tough pill to swallow. For one, there are no easy technological fixes. You can’t just make a bulky device that only facilitates slow and imperfect one-way communication, tell us it’s our responsibility to pay for and maintain it, and wash your hands of us as we still struggle to gain an autonomous voice in a society that considers us objects of pity.
Secondly, it requires acknowledging that as a hearing person, you are not the absolute center of the world, and that there are experiences outside of yours that are equally valid. It is unjust to insist that everyone speak and present like you, as our society does to Deaf people by denying us basic services, jobs, utilities, health care, and education, unless we use spoken language. This demand imposed on Deaf people by hearing people is a historical one, stemming back to the Milan Conference of 1880, where hearing educators voted to ban sign language from schools across the world so that Deaf people would be forced to speak. Over centuries, we have been forced to endure abuse, discrimination, sterilization, and eugenics, as hearing people have attempted to mold us into their shape. These effects and attitudes persist today. While the form may change, the oppression remains the same.
Deaf people should not have to wear gloves to make their words and presentation palatable to hearing people.
You already have all the tools you need to communicate with us, if you would only learn how to use them. It is time that hearing people respect Deaf people for who they are, instead of forcing us to be empty caricatures of hearing standards.
