Some people needs to be educated
I think so, on both sides. I can't help but think we are sending mixed signals to the hearing community.
However, in this case, it was a simple error of the machine that projects the captions. They had had problems multiple times and didn’t want to offer something that wasn’t reliable, but they were trying to fix it.
This is yet another situation where my parents, and the deaf community as a whole, are given the short end of the hearing world stick.
What short end of the stick? Are deaf so self righteous that deaf don't allow others to have problems if it effects us? All people are human and all people have issues such has machines breaking.
With the recent Nelson Mandela funeral uproar, where the interpreter was just making up random motions and later blamed it on his schizophrenia, the deaf community’s challenges have been in the spotlight.
My first thought when this happened wasn't that someone was trying to screw the deaf community, I believed, and still do, this was an issue of political connection. Someone's distant cousin, twice removed, needed a job.
I'm sure there are better qualified people for the job, but, excluding nepotism for a moment, would we then be excluding the people with schizophrenic issues from working?
My parents and many of their deaf friends have experienced awkward situations like this all their lives. They’ve been handed menus in Braille, offered wheelchairs at airports and questioned about whether they can drive. It seems people will continue to be misinformed about deaf people and deaf culture when things like this are happening.
Handed menus in Braille? How would they know to give a braille menus? Do they take the menus away when told you are deaf and replace them?
Offered wheelchairs at airports? In all the times I've gone to an airport, nobody has ever offered me a wheel chair. In fact, this has never even happened when buying a ticket online and specifying that I'm deaf.
I won't argue that people will be curious of deaf who drive, but it's more a curiosity than urging for a ban.
Shows like ABC Family’s Switched at Birth have offered a bit of insight to people unaware of what sign language is, but that show doesn’t portray real life at all. Even after the show’s hearing characters decided they should learn sign language to communicate with the show’s deaf characters, they still mostly communicated through lip reading. After a season and a half, I was done.
I'm curious about this. Since deaf know they are not blind and don't need braille menus, why would anyone be upset if hearing people expect us to lip read? After all, deaf don't need to touch anyone's lips. In fact, if we expect them to learn sign shouldn't they expect us to learn as well? Isn't that a fair trade?
More importantly, if the show doesn't cater to it's intended audience(hearing people), how would the show be able to exist?
Deaf people are often misjudged. They are pegged as unable when they are forced to sit in wheelchairs and strolled across the airport when their legs work just fine.
I would really like to see an example of this... It would really be hilarious.
I'd probably be laughing so hard I couldn't reject the ride.
They are pegged as always needing assistance because their local captioned theater stops offering captions and they have to go to a major theater and wear the huge, bulky caption glasses that make them look like robots.
We are the ones with the hearing issue. Why should the burden be placed on everyone else, especially when the technology exist to avoid it?
They are pegged as rude when at the grocery store they can’t hear the person behind them saying excuse me and they don’t move.
This happens to hearing people as well. It's not unique to deaf. I'm told it's an impatient person issue.
We do overcome a lot of things, but that's because we are human, not because we are deaf.
