Vinu Abraham, a communications technician at the Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing with a teletypewriter. – Photo by Erna van Balen
When Vinu Abraham was growing up in India, he had to write letters and wait for a response in order to communicate with others. His friends could just pick up the phone and talk to each other. Born deaf at a time when limited communication technology was available to him, Abraham is now a communications technician at the Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (WIDHH) in Vancouver and an active member of the Deaf community.
Modern technology has changed the way people communicate with each other, and this is especially true for the Deaf and hard of hearing communities. Smartphones, Skype and Facetime offer tremendous opportunities for people who mainly communicate visually through sign language. Though technology helps, communication barriers still exist between Deaf and hearing people.
One of the biggest current challenges is to bring Video Relay Services (VRS) to Canada. VRS is a system by which a Deaf person can call a hearing person through a sign language interpreter, using a video phone. An 18-month trial of VRS ended in January 2012, but the Vancouver-based organization B.C. Video Relay Services Committee (BCVRS) is advocating for re-establishing this service for Deaf and hard of hearing Canadians.
According to Lisa Anderson-Kellett, communications officer and volunteer with the BCVRS Committee, VRS has an enormous impact on the quality of life of Deaf and hard of hearing people. Like most Deaf people, Anderson-Kellett grew up in a hearing family and often felt she was the last one to find out about family news.
“Video Relay Services is a way for me to connect with my hearing family members and feel more in tune with my family,” she writes.
On March 27, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the body responsible for regulating telecommunications and broadcasting, announced a public consultation on whether video relay service should be offered. In the meantime, the Deaf will have to continue to rely on an old-fashioned piece of technology to call a hearing person: the teletypewriter (TTY). With a TTY, a Deaf or hard of hearing person can call the message relay centre and type a message, which the operator then conveys to the hearing party. Communication using a computer and the Internet, called IP Relay, is a more modern version based on the same principle.
However, VRS offers many advantages over the old TTY service. With TTY, it is impossible to interrupt and have a smooth and natural conversation. Another disadvantage is that the first language of many Deaf people is not English, but American Sign Language (ASL), a language in its own right which has nothing to do with English or any other spoken language. Deaf people need to type information in their second language, which may not be understood as well by the hearing person at the other end.
“With the ASL interpreter, they can read the nuances of my emotion or expression, and relay that context to my mother. Now that the [VRS] trial is over, I’m back to texting, and texting is unemotional,” Anderson-Kellett explains.
This communication barrier between Deaf and hearing people does not make the Deaf a disabled group. The Canadian Association of the Deaf (CAD) states that deafness is medically defined by the extent of loss of functional hearing and by dependence upon visual communication. But the sociological or cultural definition of the Deaf encompasses “individuals who are medically deaf or hard of hearing who identify with and participate in the culture, society, and language of Deaf people, which is based on Sign language. Their preferred mode of communication is Sign.”
Abraham agrees that Deaf people are not defined by their amount of hearing loss but by their shared culture, experiences and language.
“Out in the hearing world, [people’s] opinion of us is that we might be more disabled than we actually are. […] The way that we communicate is a little bit different, but otherwise our minds are the same. It’s just a lot more comfortable being able to communicate in your native language,” Abraham explains through interpreter Jenn Lyon.
Abraham does not use interpreters in his work with hard of hearing and non-Deaf clients, but uses texting, writing and other creative ways to communicate. He says that many clients first had to warm up to the situation that he was completely deaf, but that they are now comfortable communicating with him.
Interpreter Lyon, who has Deaf parents and grew up in the Deaf community, also found ways to communicate with her mother and with her Deaf friends after the VRS trial expired. She uses Facetime with her mother and her friends that have iPhones and texts with those that do not. Lyon knows that English is not their first language and she can easily decipher their text messages through her experience with the Deaf community.
Other technologies can also aid communication and are generally welcomed in the Deaf community. Skype has proven to be useful because it allows for visual communication, which is ideal for Deaf people. Many apps are available for smartphones, such as one for baby bed time stories in American Sign Language, one of the two sign languages used in Canada, the other being Langue des Signes Québécoise, or LSQ. There are also apps that teach hearing people signs and fingerspelling.
Despite the fact that Deaf people now have more options than ever before to communicate with hearing people, discrimination still exists, says Abraham. He was refused a job at one of the nation’s top banks, where he was that told they could not hire him because of communication barriers. Abraham thinks this barrier is only perceived as such in the hearing world.
“We have e-mail and we have so many different ways of using technology to our advantage. Deaf people can, and they do, learn English so that they’re able to write and communicate in English to people who speak English. [But] we can’t learn to hear, so hearing people need to learn to be able to communicate with us, more than we need to learn how to communicate with them,” he says.
Wonderful story. Thank you for bringing more publicity to a very important issue.