Deaf Awareness Week
Deaf Awareness Week
My five wishes for a more inclusive world
It's Deaf Awareness Week this week - it officially started yesterday but it was a Bank Holiday and I was gallivanting around the Cotswolds visiting spooky unfinished gothic mansions and rescuing a crashed Land Rover Defender, which had been run off the road by a tractor - but that’s a whole other story.
I went back to look at my blog to see when I last wrote about Deaf Awareness Week and it was in 2019 - before my son FFB was born. I had five wishes then and reading them back, they’re still the same today.
So my five wishes for Deaf Awareness Week are:
1. More subtitles... everywhere
I wish for everyone who needs subtitles to be able to have them - at the cinema, theatre, on live TV, catch up TV and streaming services. For all podcasts and music streaming. At museums, doctors' surgeries, appointments, conferences, talks, in education.
It’s a big wish and my experience of the subtitled cinema campaign I was a part of before the pandemic also means I know it’s an expensive one. Subtitles mean cost for lots of the services above.
But let’s reflect on what’s changed since 2019…
Cinemas are still not great at providing subtitled showing at premium times. I struggle to find showings I can go to.
Theatre - Stagetext is still doing a great job but can only be in so many places at any one time.
TV - streaming and catch up TV is not bad now actually. It’s unusual to find something on Netflix or Disney+ without subtitles. Amazon Prime can be a bit more sketchy especially when it comes to Hallmark Christmas movies - a guilty pleasure of mine.
Podcasts - NOW HAVE CAPTIONS… on Apple at least. Last month an Apple released an update which means there are read along captions on their podcasts. I’ve ‘listened’ to quite a few podcasts since then and while it’s not perfect - there are quite a few typos and misheard words - it’s definitely made them more accessible to me. Likewise, I love the Spotify lyrics option - sometimes it changes my entire perspective on a song. And reminds me of the time I chose music for our school assembly and it was parental advisory… whoops.
And the rest - well that’s touch and go. But I am a big believe in asking for more accessible options wherever you go - because sometimes, it’s quite simply an unknown unknown.
2. More accessibility… everywhere
Plain and simple. I wish the world was more accessible for D/deaf people. I want the people in charge of health care, travel, employment, education, all public services - the list goes on - to take some time to look at how they can make all of this easier to access for us.
Sure most of us have learnt ways to hack the systems. I rely on the help of friends and family for quite a lot of things. I also have apps, I have customer services people on Twitter who I can reach out to, but it still doesn't change the fact that I am currently overpaying on my house’s contents insurance because the only way to negotiate it was on the phone and I couldn't do that and, at that exact moment in time, I didn't have the energy to 'hack the system' and find a way to do it. And FJM was in the middle of a massive project and didn’t have have the bandwidth.
After all, hearing people don't have to do that. Why should I? And let’s not talk about the rigmarole I go through to book a smear test…
3 More awareness… everywhere
A lot of the time I find my life is made difficult not because people are mean but because they simply don't know what the right thing to do is. Many people have never met someone with a hearing loss before. And as no one size fits all with deafness, even if they had, chances are what helped that person might not always help me.
I have always made it my policy to be as open as possible to helping people understand not just the generic ways of how to make life easier for D/deaf people but also to help them understand the quirks of my own hearing loss and how that means, they cannot group us together under one big label. We are all different.
I look forward to the day where I don’t get offered the one-size-fits-all solution when I enquire about accessibility - because it really doesn’t. And let’s not mention the amount of people who offer me audio description when I enquire about subtitles.
4 More employment opportunities… everywhere
As a deaf person, I am fortunate that I can only count on one hand the number of times I've missed out on a job because of my deafness. But all three times, weirdly, the people chose to tell me straight out that it was because I was deaf. These jobs were not jobs where hearing was compulsory. But these people had made up their minds - a hearing person would be more efficient. I was out of the running.
The last time this happened, for a crappy little job, at a crappy little company, I took the time to write them a letter explaining why 'THAT WAS NOT ACCEPTABLE' and while I never got a reply, I hope that realising how close they came to a call from my lawyer, has made them approach who they employ slightly differently. In all honesty, probably not.
Right now, I work at a company where people do consider inclusivity. I have video calls with people from all over the world. I have had colleagues drive to Walmart in the hour before our scheduled call to buy a web cam because their laptop one is playing up. I believe they see my talent ahead of my disability.
And that's what I wish for everyone. I have no idea how we get there but these are wishes right? And sometimes wishes do come true.
5 More support… everywhere
I am pretty lucky that on a personal level and indeed through Twitter and Instagram, I have an amazingly supportive network of people. People who, since I started writing as Deaf Girly, have been there through some insanely challenging times, picked me up off the floor, carried me for a bit when I've not felt like carrying myself.
I sometimes find my deafness incredibly isolating. I find it scary, frustrating and exhausting. And having a community who understands that is invaluable. But it’s always good to grow that community.
So that’s my last wish - embrace Deaf Awareness Week this year. Read all about it. Learn all about it. And see the different perspectives being shared. No one size fits all but learning even a little bit about it could make a big difference to someone else.
