Advocacy and the OHL Community - Part 4
This is my keynote address for the SayWhatClub 2007 National
Convention. It was a wonderful convention. Our
full coverage begins here.
This is part four of four parts.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
~~~~~
The next example is from an organization called TDI. They used to be
called Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc., and I mentioned them
previously as the organization that publishes the national TTY
directory, also called the Blue Book. They recently changed their
official name to just "TDI". They are a national group that
advocates for telecommunications access for people with hearing loss.
They recently issued a press release about a video relay service, which
is abbreviated VRS. For those who aren't familiar with VRS, it's a relay
service that allows people who sign to communicate with the relay
provider using sign language. Whatever the person signs is voiced to the
hearing person over a standard telephone, and visa versa.
The press release states, "VRS is the first telecommunications
relay service that enables individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing
to communicate in their native language, American Sign Language
(ASL)."
This was actually one of the more egregious press releases I've seen,
because it claims that ASL is the native language of hard of hearing
people. That's just flat not true. So I sent off my normal letter of
complaint. And I know several other people who did, as well. And I
didn't really expect anything different from the responses, or lack of
responses, I'd seen before.
But I was very pleasantly surprised. The folks at TDI listened to our
complaints, realized that we had a valid point, and agreed to remedy the
situation! They withdrew their original press release and replaced it
with a revised and more accurate one. In place of the offending
statement, it said, "VRS is the first telecommunications relay
service that enables some individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing
to communicate over the telephone in sign language." That's not my
favorite wording, and I would have stated it differently. But it's at
least accurate.
TDI also apologized to the OHL community for perpetrating this
misrepresentation. As far as I know this is the first time that
something like this has happened, that a predominately Deaf organization
has recognized legitimate social justice concerns of the OHL population
and taken action to support them. We were ecstatic, of course, and
profusely thanked the folks at TDI for this monumental occurrence.
Another recent example concerns an ad from Hamilton Relay Service for
a CapTel outreach coordinator. For those who don't know, CapTel is a
captioned telephone. In order to use it you must speak. So it's used
almost exclusively by OHL folks. Hamilton's job description stated,
"Position is responsible for providing and gathering information,
which will help, improve the quality of the CapTel(r) service and the
number of customers served . . ." So this job is primarily about
communicating with a lot of OHL folks, almost none of whom sign.
The first sentence of the next paragraph is, "Applicants with
the ability to communicate through the use of American Sign Language are
preferred."
This situation is very similar to the first one we looked at, where
an ASL job requirement had nothing to do with the skills actually
required to do the job. So some other advocates and I sent in our
letters of complaint. And again we didn't expect a very positive
outcome; and again, we were very pleasantly surprised. They withdrew
their original ad, and released a revised one that encouraged members of
the OHL community to apply for this position. And that also happened in
March! And that is only the second time that I'm aware of that something
like this has happened.
March was a good month for OHL advocates!
So, what does this all mean?
I think the first thing it means is that the OHL community is finally
awakening. Several people in the community took the time to write
e-mails and send them off to these organizations, despite the fact that
the same action had no discernible impact the previous 20 or 30 or 50 or
100 times they had done that. But we believed that we were right, and we
believed that if we persevered, we would eventually succeed. And it
looks like that's starting to happen.
Another conclusion is that advocacy works. If you are faced with a
situation that you don't like, or you see something that's not the way
you think it should be, it's very important to take the time to complain
about it to the people who have the power to change it. There's an old
rule in the advertising business that says that for every letter that
someone writes, there are 10,000 people who share that view, but don't
take the time to write the letter. So if you see an unjust situation,
and if you take the time to respond to it, the impact of your response
is much larger than what you might expect the impact of a single person
to be. If a hundred people respond, the organization that receives those
responses assumes that a million people share the view that was
expressed in those responses. And that's VERY powerful.
You may be saying, "But I don't have time to advocate". And
that's an interesting statement, because you're always advocating.
Everything you do is advocacy. Every time you buy a product, you're
advocating for that product, and against its competitors. Every time you
see an uncaptioned video at a theme park or your doctor's office, or
anywhere, and you don't complain about it, you are advocating against
captioned videos. Every time you go to a play or a church service or a
lecture or a movie, and you don't ask for an assistive listening device,
or captioning, or an interpreter, or whatever accommodation works for
you, you are advocating to keep people with hearing loss excluded from
mainstream American life. So don't think that you don't have the time to
advocate, because you're always advocating. The only question is,
"Are you advocating for things that promote social justice for
people with hearing loss, or are you advocating against those
things?"
Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the
only thing that ever has."
Thank you.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
