The Importance Of Access To The Deaf Community

Communication is defined as the ability to exchange a message to another person, whether it be spoken, signed, or gestured. If we placed ourselves in a room filled with hearing people, we all have equal access to one another’s conversations. We may not know what is being discussed in the conversations around us, but we can hear it happening. Now if we put a Deaf person in this room of a hundred voices, he/she will not know what is going on. He/she will have no access to the conversations around them. It would be the same situation was reversed. If we put a hearing person in a room full of Deaf people, he/she would feel the same way. Sadly, people who are clueless about the Deaf community don’t think about it from a Deaf perspective, and this is the cause of unequal communication. …show more content…
Every person has the right to equal communication and just because a person is Deaf, does not mean they should be deprived of that opportunity. Nowadays, there are various resources that can be utilized to provide equal access. Interpreters allow Deaf people to access to the hearing world, working as a bridge between both English and ASL. Closed captioning when presenting a video or watching a movie, is a tremendous help as well. TTY’s and Video Phones allow Deaf people to make phone calls. All of these resources and yet, the hearing world still does not work to accommodate the Deaf