Sign Language as a Job Requirement to Work with
DeafAndHardOfHearing
Here are some interesting perspectives on the policy of
DeafAndHardOfHearing agencies that everyone who works there knows sign
language.
October 2005
Here's my original article.
Here's a response from one of out newsletter
readers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2005
We've been having a very interesting discussion on the Oral Hearing
Loss (OHL) Advocacy list about DeafAndHardOfHearing service agencies
requiring the ability to sign as a condition of employment for all
employees. Some agencies state that they require knowledge of basic sign
language in order to make their work environment as barrier free as
possible.
I want to share my response to that statement, but first I'll explain
what OHL is and tell you how you can be part of these very interesting
and important discussions.
We use the term Oral Hearing Loss (OHL) to indicate people with
hearing loss who prefer spoken language as their primary means of
communication, including those who may rely on hearing aids, ALDs, or
CART. It includes the vast majority of people who consider themselves
hard of hearing, late deafened, or oral deaf.
To find out more about OHL Advocacy please point your browser to
http://www.hearinglossweb.com/Issues/Identity/ohl/nat/ohla/ohla.htm
To join the list, visit http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/ohladvocacy/
And now my thoughts on the requirement that all employees of
DeafAndHardOfHearing service agencies know sign language.
With all respect, this requirement is one of the pillars of
institutionalized discrimination; it allows DeafAndHardOfHearing
agencies to continue to focus on the Deaf community, while claiming to
serve the DeafAndHardOfHearing population.
Consider the following statement:
"We do require the ability to communicate in spoken English as a
condition of employment in order to make our work environment as barrier
free as possible."
It's the analog of the previous statement; I bet you've heard it
before from employers trying to justify not hiring a deaf person. It's
illegal and unethical when they do it; it may not be illegal when
DeafAndHardOfHearing agencies make the analogous statement (because it
may not be discrimination based on a disability), but it's certainly
unethical.
One of the hallmarks of the OHL population is isolation and
psychosocial issues directly related to their hearing loss. Difficulty
in communication and its consequences are their biggest issues. By
ensuring that an agency fails to experience any of that, the agency is
GUARANTEEING that its employees don't understand the basic issues of the
population they claim to be serving.
The second problem with this discrimination is that it perpetuates
the myth that all people with hearing loss sign. When a member of the
general public or a news reporter or a politician or whoever walks into
a DeafAndHardOfHearing agency and sees everyone signing, it just
reinforces their misperception that everyone with hearing loss signs. So
when a hard of hearing person is looking for communications access, the
only service that's ever offered is an interpreter. So the agency is
preventing communications access for the folks it claims to serve.
A third issue is the inability of signing folks to really relate to
the average OHL person. Again, the major issues of OHL folks are
difficulty in communicating and the consequences of that difficulty.
Signing folks who work in an agency where everyone signs experience none
of those issues. The Culturally Hard of Hearing (audiologically hard of
hearing, but immersed in Deaf culture, often from childhood) do not
experience these kinds of issues, because they have communications
access. (They are also generally not members of the OHL community,
because they prefer sign to spoken language.) Those who lost their
hearing later in life probably experienced those issues, but they may be
nothing more than distant memories. HOH, LD, and oral deaf folks who are
fluent in sign cannot and do not represent the normal OHL person. Many
of them are also not members of the OHL community, because they also
prefer sign to spoken language.
Another issue is that by refusing to hire people who do not sign, an
agency is blocking any possibility that it will truly come to serve the
OHL community. We sometimes hear that DeafAndHardOfHearing agencies try
to hire OHL folks, but none ever apply. Invariably a little digging
reveals that one of the job requirements is the ability to sign. There
are VERY FEW OHL folks who sign fluently. So the agencies typically hire
Culturally HOH folks and trot them out as "proof" that they
are serving the OHL community. I know of only a handful of true OHL
people who work in the hearing loss "industry". This policy
prevents OHL folks from gaining a toehold in what would seem to be a
natural career path.
In my opinion people who trot out the tired argument that people have
to sign to work in a DeafAndHardOfHearing agency are either uninformed
or disingenuous, and are perpetuating institutionalized discrimination.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
by Mitch Turbin
October 2005
Editor: I was a bit surprised to get only a couple of responses to
last week's article entitled "Sign Language as a Job Requirement to
Work with DeafAndHardOfHearing". Both of them were positive. There
was also some discussion of the article on a few of the hearing loss
lists, where the response was more mixed (though the majority of
responders in agreement with my position, I believe.)
One of the comments I got was from Mitch Turbin, who teachers
graduate classes in Rehabilitation Counseling for the Deaf and Hard of
Hearing at Western Oregon University. Here are his remarks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I sometimes fight the same battle that Larry poses here - saying that
if we demand ASL for all workers we are discriminating against those job
applicants who are hard of hearing or late deafened. But my response is
now often to say that if we insist that all counselors/social workers,
etc. have ASL skills, then it would make sense to insist that all
counselors etc. also have good WRITTEN English skills. It is at this
point that I draw the line and refuse to give ground. For an OHL or
hearing person to know ASL they need to acquire a skill; granted it's a
difficult skill but one that specialists in working with people with
hearing loss can be reasonably expected to learn for at least some job
settings. For a Deaf person to be able to speak, they need to NOT have
their disability, rather than just learn a skill; so there's the
difference. (OK-there are a few exceptions, people born deaf or who
become deaf early in life, and yet learn to speak well, but those are
exceptions, and we shouldn't require such unusual skill in all Deaf
people. History has shown that this is indeed an injustice.)
Requiring that all workers be able to use written English fluently is
where some justice MUST happen, in my opinion. If that Deaf person has
worked hard and become truly skilled and fluent in written English, they
are often quite open to "listening" to the issues of OHL
clients and addressing their specific needs. Indeed, in my graduate
classes in Rehabilitation Counseling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing at
Western Oregon University, I have sometimes been surprised and delighted
at the openness and perceptiveness of my Deaf students in regard to the
OHL issues I teach - and almost always, those are the Deaf students who
turn in really good WRITTEN papers, in clear, lucid English. Alas, it is
true that there are service providers, both Deaf and hearing, who are
quite bi-lingual but still engage in a discriminatory refusal to address
OHL people and our real issues. It is easier, however, for me to
advocate for equal treatment of OHL and Deaf people when I am also known
to advocate for both of those native languages, ASL and English.
