a more silent world

I had to travel coast-to-coast yesterday returning from a very short-duration trip. For this reason my packing was extremely light and not well-thought-out. When I first arrived at the airport, one of my ear batteries died...doh. Oh please please please don't let the other one die. I checked all the stores in the terminal, and of course they don't carry ear batteries. Of course, security cannot be bothered to have any written instructions posted anywhere. Do they want your shoes on or off this week? The people calling out boarding instructions couldn't be more unintelligible as they scream into the microphone they are presumably trying to eat (why else would they cram it against their mouth?). When exactly are crucial places like airports going to become more friendly to those of us who cannot hear? I won't be forgetting spare batteries for future air travel, that much is certain.

I use captions for TV and home movies. That being said, I was truly shocked the first time I watched a DVD on my Mac--the captions were utterly beautiful. Nice, anti-aliased font, partially transparent font background, and all of this is customizable! Technology is sufficiently advanced at this point that there is really no reason not to expect pretty captions, but why isn't it the norm? Is it greedy to expect pretty captions when they are so obviously possible? Surely a company today pitching a 255-color computer would be laughed out of the market, so why is my state-of-the-art, big screen HDTV showing me such crude captions? Think of how much time and effort are put into making things aesthetically pleasing these days--why not captions?

I think it's a very hard question to answer. I believe Deaf, deaf, and HoH must make a united stand on this issue to ensure that we ALL get equal communication access, but I know the access needs differ for each of those groups. The hearing population is obviously by and large ignorant of our needs, so I believe a united front gives us the best chance to making progress for ourselves. From a HoH standpoint, I am not yet fluent in ASL, so my needs focus more on the ability to read or otherwise understand spoken language. For this reason, I find captions, email, IM, etc are useful tools while interpreters are completely worthless to me. Being aware that there are differing needs in the larger group, though, I personally would rather help further the cause for all involved subgroups rather than just those that help me. Clearly another issue we face is the huge population of deaf and HoH people who have no idea the Deaf world even exists. I fit into this category just a short tim...

I am loving watching vlogs. Favorites so far: pickled-relish, SeekGeo, and ABC. I definitely feel progress in how many signs I am able to catch, which is very encouraging. We bought a video camera to film our baby, so maybe I will post a vlog introducing myself in the next month or so--still very shaky on ASL word order so I will work on that a bit more before even attempting a vlog.

So my company, who shall remain nameless, rolled out a mandatory training video about respect in the workplace, discrimination, and harassment. The video had no captions, and no DVD with captions was available to borrow. I asked for a transcript and was told one was not available. I watched the video at my desk, which must have annoyed my coworkers (high volume), and then sent another email to my HR people chastising them for presenting a video that dealt with discrimination against protected classes of people that was entirely inaccessible to hearing impaired (yes, I intentionally used this term in my email even though I find it mildly offensive). Gee, I'm glad we don't employ anyone who is more deaf than I... Yet another example of Deaf issues being ignored by a company large enough to know better.

After searching every local college and university, I found a local Deaf organization that offers very reasonably priced ASL classes. Hopefully it fits into my fall schedule. I am really enjoying watching peoples' vlogs. Between Signing Naturally, Lifeprint, and ASL Pro dictionary I feel like I am actually "getting" much more over the last month. I am still amazed at how fast Deaf fingerspell--usually by the time I realize they are fingerspelling, the word is complete and I have missed it entirely. Ouch. Cheers