Story Pitch: How Covid-19 and the Mask Mandate Has Affected the Deaf and HOH Community.

In the deaf and hard of hearing community one of the most important parts of communication and language are the facial expressions and mouth morphemes that go along with the signed language. During Covid-19 all of us have experienced hardships and obstacles that have been hard to overcome, but one thing that we still have access to is ou normal form of communication. For my story, I want to interview and get to see the impact of this pandemic on a portion of our community that is often overlooked and has to fight for accommodation on a daily basis. There are clear masks, face shields, and more PPE products that have been developed to help with the obstacle that masks present. Even though these have been produced, they are much harder to come by and there are still a lot of obstacles that make It hard to communicate and exist in 2020. I have some connections to the Deaf/ HOH community in Denver as well as Greeley because of my previous Interpreting major, I plan to reach out and interview a few people that are part of that community and learn about their experience. I also would like to look into how available accessible PPE is.