The COVID-19 pandemic has made communication and mask wearing a challenge for those members of the deaf and hard of hearing (hoh) community. Many of these people rely on lip reading and hearing aids to help them communicate but due to mask mandates and six feet apart guidelines, there are several new obstacles that these people must overcome.
Firstly, both hearing aids and masks are worn around the ears. For a person already using hearing aids, having to wear an additional mask can cause discomfort or even loss of the hearing aids themselves in some cases. Doctors recommend that these people either wear masks with thinner straps or avoid them completely and opt for a mask that ties around the head instead. Reflecting back on my own experiences in the past year amidst COVID, reading about these people’s experiences and their struggles to communicate during such a difficult period in human history made me realize how fortunate I am to be considered a “normal” member of society. I try to imagine what going through the pandemic might have been like for a Deaf person, but I am unable to. More needs to be done in integrating these people into our societies and breaking down the barriers that currently impede our communication.
The following excerpt recounts the experiences of one Ms. Queen West. She spent five days at a mental hospital during the pandemic yet felt as though she had not gained much from her stay. She found group therapy pointless as she was Deaf and could not fully participate in their conversations, she had to communicate with hospital staff primarily through lipreading and writing as they could not bring an in-person interpreter due to COVID restrictions. Ms. West attempted to utilize the existing technology through the use of Video Remote Interpretation but often ran into problems with audio quality and network connectivity, similar to some of the issues we faced as a group trying to learn ASL over Zoom. West’s experiences are by no means an outlier but rather a poignant display of the lack of preparedness/ resources that exist within our institutions to cater towards the dead and hoh community. I believe that the fields of linguistics, medicine, and technology need to respond in unison to some of the key issues outlined previously and come up with some innovative new solutions.
During our final class, Ms. Kaye talked about how she had previously worked on a project with a programmer to try and build an app that would allow for seamless English to ASL translation. Her idea was that if you gave the app a sentence in English, it would convert the sentence to the ASL TNAV sentence structure and output the visual signs. I believe that a program like this can be developed within a year having read about how one Indian tribe member developed an entire online database for their dying language in the hopes of preserving it. This app stands to benefit millions of members of the global deaf community, especially people such as Ms. West who was unable to clearly communicate with her doctors.
The struggle with masks as well increasing isolation as a result of the pandemic have led to a serious toll on the mental health of many Deaf and hoh people. The masks and the six feet mandate make it nearly impossible for non-hearing people to communicate with their counterparts. Barriers already existed in their communication and now they have been worsened. Just as Gallaudet is the world’s only private liberal arts university of the deaf and hoh, I believe that in every major city there should be a fully deaf accessible hospital with the latest technologies and an abundance of interpreters available to assist deaf patients. I believe that healthcare is a basic human right and that no one should have to live in fear of going to the hospital simply because their doctors and nurses are unable to understand what they are saying.
The experiences of Ms. Quinn West at the hospital: https://www.theverge.com/22254591/deaf-communication-tech-access-coronavirus-isolation
Input from medical professionals: https://hive.rochesterregional.org/2020/10/covid-impact-on-deaf-community
Replies
This post was extremely illuminating as I also had not considered the different ways that the pandemic has made communication challenging to so many members of our society. Having a deaf uncle it makes me want to ask him about the different ways he has coped.
Nibras, this is once again something that I had not even considered as a problem until you or Susmita shed some light onto it. Usually when we hear about people struggling during the pandemic, we usually don't even get the perspective of the deaf and hard to hear communities. I think the app is a wonderful idea and I really hope that it can get the traction it deserves and the attention it needs to be made into a thing soon. Thanks for bringing this to attention and exploring the topic that we probably may not have even heard about.
I couldn't agree with Abhishek more. I hadn't thought about it before. Because we are not deaf ourselves, we don't see things from the perspective of deaf people and the deaf community. I think this app is a great idea! Thank you for bringing this to our attention!