My Fabulous Husband (I capitalize that because he truly is) used to work for the Pentagon in Washington, D. C. He is what you would call a "communications specialist". One of his many various duties was to design a program for a training session with live captioning for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired employees in attendance. This is just one of the reasons he is so fabulous.
Instead of trying to see what they needed from his viewpoint, he went to the Deaf and Hearing Impaired and involved them in the process of designing a program specifically for them that worked for them. With their input in the process, he was able to come up with the best solution that worked for everyone. He's very clever that way. He recognizes we're not all the same, nor are we all on the same level. We are at varying degrees in our needs, our communications and our skills.
I'm very proud of him, how he is able to observe, ask questions, ponder and come up with solutions that help. I'm also very thankful to have someone in my life who has been observant enough to work so hard at living with me. It's not easy for a hearing person to live with someone who is deaf. There is a lot of trial and error on both parties as we navigate our way through the seas of communication, but every bit of work is worth it. We all benefit.
If only other deaf people would take the same approach of thinking "how can I include everyone else ? make access for as broad an cross-section as possible," (which most are duty bound to do with the access laws), instead of the deaf approach, "if you can't follow, tough... this is how I do it...".
ReplyDeleteWe volunteer ourselves where ever we can. I think we'll see more of this in the future with money so short and the need so great. Nice to see you stop in. :-)
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, I mean we will see more people trying to help one another, volunteer because money is short and the need is great. Sometimes things can be read the wrong way....
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