Understanding Deafness: History, Language and the Web
Lisa Herrod Scenario Seven
Speaker: Lisa Herrod
Thank you. I wanted to talk about understanding deafness and the point I want to make from the outset is that I'm talking about cultural deafness from a cultural perspective rather than infirmity, and what motivated this presentation, and I might say, I want to put this up now in case... . It is on a screen over here in case you have any questions throughout the presentation you can send them to twitter and I can address them later on.
I started learning sign language in 94. Australian sign language, and I worked as an interpreter for about 8 or 9 years after that up until 2003. We are going to fix the screen... I think I have a secret magnet implanted somewhere in my body that the aliens put there. I will keep going and hopefully the other screen will come up. I started learning sign language and did that for 3 years full time and it was really intensive and one of its kind. One of the kind. Moved into interpreting. This is a picture of me on the right, it is a bit dark, some of the classes had activities we had cup days where we would all sign and these was an example of when we went off to the zoo and we were learning all the animals. It was an interactive course and enjoyable. I found that when I moved into the web about 9 or 10 years after I had a slow transition across from interpreting to website design and accessibility and so forth, I started to know this an interesting discrepancy between what was being projected in terms of deafness and what I understood it to be and so an article I wrote last year published goes into detail around that. My main point is that we don't, as a web community, people don't seem to understand that we see it as a binary thing whereas you either hear or you don't. You may have a hearing impairment where you hear a little more or less than someone else but essentially it was an on/off type things and quite often people would compare hearing impairments. Have you been asked the question "if you had to choose would you rather be blind or deaf?" people ask all the time that question and it illustrates that we don't understand deafness as a cultural thing, we just look at it from the medical perspective of infirmity in that you can't hear.
So what I want to do is give you a little information from a cultural perspective I think it is important to understand that for some people accessing the Internet is not about captions and subtitles, although they are helpful and useful, it is not the only way to help people, deaf people access information. So, yes, just under 9 million people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing, and you see I have a big D deaf or a little d deaf, but generally big D deaf relates to people who identify with the deaf community who are culturally deaf, who use sign language, who as their primary language and for whom English may not be a language that they are fluent in. Even if they live in Australia, even if they live in England or the US.
So, this represents about in the UK 1 in 7. One thing I want to stress is that we quite often put things I to percentages. We say 6.3 of the population are deaf or 2.3 of the population have X disability or impairment I think that detracts from what we are trying to do. It is hard to understand how many people it impacts on when we talk about percentages. When you think about 9 million people, that is a lot of people. 9 million! Think about it. Probably 4 and half million people in Sydney, I don't think we have 9 million people in between Melbourne and Sydney together, which is where I am from. So, it is a lot of people to be not considering.
So big D deaf and little d deaf are important to understand because it essentially means are we looking at web accessibility from the perspective of this person can't hear, but they need captioning to understand audio and that sort of thing, but little d deaf is another side of it where a language is definitely a consideration.
This is I want to show you from project work. This is Petra, she is 39, has a university degree, 2 young children. Her family income is about 65K Australian dollars. She is semi experienced web user and spends 2 hours a day online using sites like twitter, IM, E mail and what some people call "Face hook". She is big D deaf. She identifies with the Deaf community and she signs. She uses it for surfing, online shopping, purchasing travel and movie tickets and it is important to understand that while she is Australian and went through an Australian education system, English is not her first language if you think about the implicaions of accessing content online where English is not your first language, it changes things dramatically. This is Paul, he is 60 69 and retired. He uses the web to do basic browsing and personal research. He is little d deaf. He is a person who has has diminished hearing overtime. He is what we would recognise at deaf now, he has to use subtitles on the TV and that sort of thing. Difficult for him to hear radio but doesn't identify with deaf community. He has English as a first language and is fluent in English.
So, just talking about language and culture for the deaf community, there are regional signs and differences and it is something I have been asked a lot and people find surprising is that sign language is different from region to region and I am not talking about sign language used in Japan as against Africa or England, so here is BSL, British Sign Language, in Australia we have Oslan and in America they have ASL. Sign languages are quite different, particularly between America and England, or America and Australia. New Zealand sign language is very similar to Australian.
So what I want to do... I was on Skype the other day with my dogs who are in Australia, and they must have done that...
I have a map up on the screen, and it has, it shows America on one side and Europe or France and England on the other side. And I want to explain a little about migration and language and how this comes to be that in England we speak with BSL and it is very different to ASL. So Kent a little wooded area in Kent, there was a small Hamlet and it was interesting because if you think back to the 1600 people didn't travel and have the same communication, they weren't able to communicate the same way and as quickly as we do so people didn't travel from their own little Hamlets and villages as much as we do so there was a strong concentration of language in certain areas, as you can see now compared to Australia even your accents across the country are very different. And so you can imagine that when you have small little Hamlets and villages and deaf people within those communities, perhaps they had one or two other deaf people in that community, so interesting, someone from this village and a few people ended up moving from England across the US. And this is in the 1600s and so we are looking at a region that covers Boston and an island called Martha's Vineyard and another area in Connecticut. These are important areas because we have an instance of someone moving from England in 1600s who moved to Boston to start a new life who worked successfully as a farmer and at some point moved to Martha's Vineyard which is a very expensive holiday destination. Over a period of 50 years a lot of other people from the same region moved to the island and because travel was a lot more difficult what happened was because there was a lot of considerable deafness in the people that moved there the community grew and more and more people spoke to a point where everyone spoke sign language. There is a fantastic book which I will reference later that you might like to read and so in that area, people were, there was a thriving community of deaf people and through research that was done perhaps about 40 years ago, they found that the hearing people who signed could not remember when they had conversations if they were signing or speaking and quite often hearing people would sign to each other depending on the context.
So, we had an English person moving to the US there was not a structured education system for the deaf at that time but what happened about 100 years later was that a school for the deaf was set up in Conneticut that an person who set it up went back to Europe, to find a good education system, that he could use in educating the deaf. He travelled to England, looked at different methodologies, including oralism, Cued Speech and he couldn't find anything or anyone prepared to help him. It was a really top secret thing when people set up schools for the deaf, what they were trying to do back then was teach them to be hearing, to pass off as being hearing. So people would keep their secret so they had a business to sell. So what this person did, he moved across to Europe, went to Paris, found a very successful school for the deaf a brilliant teacher, and brought him back to the US. So in the states now, the sign language they use over there is actually based on old-fashioned, old French sign language. So it is a combination of that. If we look back to the map, the people in Martha X vineyard were, transport started to develop and ferries started going across. They heard about the school in Conneticut. People were sending their children there to school for the deaf, it was a great central area for everyone to be. And those people influenced the sign language going on in that school. So in fact, ASL now incorporates traits of English or BSL, probably then called old Kentish sign language, a really interesting development of sign language that's why ASL is very different to BSL. My migration to Australia, that's why Australian is more similar to British sign language the book I was referencing.
That's a question I get asked often, don't all deaf people speak the same language? Why don't they speak the same language that's one of the reasons.
The other reason is also that his harder to communicate sign than to learn from each other when there is distance separating, it is much easier to learn from each other when communicate on the phone and watch people in films and that sort of thing.
Recently in Japan an election was due. In order to understand the election and to be able to vote, there were 16 key terms that were new and essential to understanding and making an educated decision in the election for voters. They needed too device 16 signs. It is an unusual way of devising signs. Usually signs develop over time, language is an organic thing, people make up new words or things evolve but what they needed to do things situation was actually develop the signs so that the Deaf Community in the area in the prefecture could vote fairly.
Some of the signs that they came up with were employment, ballistics missiles, Pirate and floating crab cannery which I still don't know or understand what it is. There is a photo of one of the gentleman demonstrating the sign.
So, as I was saying, for us, it is easy for us to think about language as something that grows organically and we share. There is a lot or Americanisation of English at the moment which is probably happening over here too. We can understand white happens. You go to the movies, watch something, pick up a word or listen to a new track on the radio or download something on fire tunes, any of those things, talking on the phone even. In terms of language and technology for the deaf, let's keep in mind talking about culturally deaf people who sign, so if someone lives in Australia, someone lives in Melbourne and someone in birth 4000 kilometres apart or someone in New Zealand and the states how do they communicate. Now it is easier, we have Internet, email, texting, but in terms of communicating visually in a first language, which would allow people to transfer signs and learn of each other, you still require video. So, thinking back to I think the 1800s or so when the phone was - does anyone know, I should know the date. When the phone was designed, do you know, it was actually developed because Alexander Bell has - had, they are dead now, a wife who was deaf. He focused a lot of his time - her mother was deaf as well and they focused a lot of time on teaching her to speak. She was interviewed somewhere down the end of your life saying that she above all else wanted to identify as a hearing person and did not want to associate with the Deaf Community at all. The development of the phone was an aid to help her to, to be hearing rather than embrace her deafness. There was the phone, from there TTY became available and that allowed the deaf to communicate to each other via typing. So still a word language based reading system rather than visual. TTY - telephone typewriter, sorry. From there, in the 80s or 90s, people were using faxes, it was a big way of communicating. People would contact each other, if they didn't see each other at the deaf club they would fax add say are you going. Earlier, it was I am going to the deaf clubs, see who is there, you would sign, catch up and tell stories, go home. Faxing made it easier. From an interpreting perspective, initially the situation was you would be booked for a project, turn up to a meeting and sit around for half an hour and wait to see if the deaf person arrived or not. If they had been called up or had not been able to make the appointment. What changed that from an interpreting perspective, mobile phones, I was then getting messages, I am stuck on the bus, I will be there in an hour. Great I will just get a coffee or, I am not coming into class today. Don't tell the teacher, just go home. I would think, cool, two hours off instead of waiting around for someone. Of course, mobile technology in terms of texting changed things. It meant people didn't have to go to the deaf club to see their mates, they could text and say let's go to the movies instead. Back its old days people would literally sent a letter, wait a few days and say are you going to deaf club at the weekend. Now in terms of social media, people have a much broader range of technology that helps them communicate with each other and keep in touch.
What I have been looking at is different social media and networking sites that are in use. There is a whole lot of different groups that have cropped up, Twitter, Flickr, facebook, YouTube even. For example deaf coffee. I think it is fantastic, imagine how much its changed things from even 20 years ago someone has created a Twitter account called deaf coffee. 255 followers at the moment. Imagine someone sends at a message and says, we are going for coffee at this point. It allows people who are living perhaps in isolated places or who don't have strong social group to meet other deaf people. Deaf queer. Again imagine the Deaf Community is a small proportion of our larger community. They are a minority group, culturally deaf people. Imagine it would have been perhaps a bit intimidating or difficult to meet other people, so now on line social networking systems or sites are around it makes it a lot easier to meet people.
I just wanted to show you a list. I think there are 12 pages of groups on Flickr if you such deafness. This is Flickr where people up load photographs. One of the groups I found was deaf. The deaf group. This is for anyone deaf to up load photos around deafness, around the Deaf Community or anything like that. Of course, look at these, there are so many discussions on line. I don't know if you Flickr, I use it quite a bit, some of the groups that crop up might have one member or have a handful or lots. This has 200 members the discussion for me showed it is a thriving on line community for the deaf.
Actually I might point out some of the - I will go back - Facebook or Facehook, this is Facebook deaf, it has over 17,000 members. Other Facebook groups that deaf people have started up, various things. Obviously there are deaf people in different Flickr groups and different Facebook groups, nothing to do with deafness at all. The point here, it allows people to come together across countries when living isolated areas, when they have lost contact with people from deaf schools and want to keep in contact that way. YouTube is another. This is one of the channels. This lady has 1500 subscribers. In terms of communication and social media, in terms of blogging, what is happening on line is that now often deaf blogs, bloggers are posting video posts so the articles are not actually written but they are video blogs. The comments and responses are in return video responses. So often what you see on YouTube anyway someone will post a video response to someone else's video.
Then of course there is all this sort of dating sites and that sort of thing, not this one sorry, this is tag deaf.com, a new website specifically for the deaf, anyone in the Deaf Community to join. It says welcome to tag deaf, the leading social network for the deaf and hard of hearing on the web. Want to meet thousands of deaf people, make new friends. Yes, I do, actually, if I live out somewhere where I don't get to see, meet up with deaf people in person often. Or if I am hearing and want to meet deaf people or I want to get back in contact with friends from school. The point I want to make about school, in the past more so than now, deaf students would go off to school, they would go to boarding school. Where we had nicknames, for example, scenario girl is one of my nicknames. A lot of kids would go to boarding school and their nicknames were numbers, where is 2? Where is 10,? It referred to the number, referring to the numbers on the end of their bed boxes for boarding. Really interesting. I imagine this sort of things helps people get back together. They would have gone to boarding school perhaps at great distance, gone home and lost contact with people.
Dating services. My deaf life, it is a social networking and video entertainment site powered for deaf people for deaf people. Anyone can join. Reading off for the benefit of anyone who can't read the screen. Anyone can join and enjoy my deaf life, whether one person or a clubs it is free to join a there are forums and connections and friendships and that type of thing.
What I want to do now is just highlight a couple of books you might find interesting. We are talking about deafness as a culture, the impact that it has on the way people access content on the web is very different. I don't know if it has come out clearly in the short presentation. If somebody accesses web content through their second language when the first, language is visual and doesn't have a written form, accessing web content can be a lot different to the way we access it.
So, what I want to do is bring up books you might find of interest. The first is seeing voices by Oliver sacks. It is an interesting and high level, detailed - high level isn't correct, view of the Deaf Community. I would definitely recommend if you were going to read one book about deafness, I would say this one. Accessible and easy to read. The mask of benevolence is fantastic, it really talks about what has happened to the deaf community, how they have been marginalised through education, pulled out of class and taught to speak rather than focusing on sign language. It has affected them educationally, and in terms of being under employed and how we tend to focus on deafness as a medical model, infirmity, rather than the cultural model. This is fantastic book as well interesting from a historical perspective. Some of the things I mentioned earlier about migration, schools for the deaf in France, Italy England, there is a lot about America and the UK as well.
So, I have sometime for questions. .
Speaker: Floor
When we still had Yahoo! live until we got the first bill how much it cost for a live streaming video service, there were several deaf chat rooms, where 20 different people were signing to each other over five different countries. Do you know if people use Skype or other systems that we use for business meetings, because they are free systems like dim dim for example, that you could use. Do you know if there is a scene around that already or is it something that could be more brought to people.
Speaker: Lisa
I don't know if there is a scene around that. SMS is huge, messenger massive for ages; I think it was one of the big things in terms of on line communication that opened things up a lot.
Speaker: Floor
I loved it back then, everybody was beating us around the head because we had a Flash only website, and oh it is not accessible, then we found five deaf chat rooms there how is it not accessible then.
Speaker: Unknown
It is accessible, that's the thing, it opens up communication for a whole lot of people. .
Speaker: Unknown
Just to reinforce popularity of the signing chat rooms, they are not universally accessible but we are catering for a particular user group here for whom they are. Obviously there are issues to do with multiple disabilities and you don't want to fracture out accessibility because you are only dealing people with with one impairment so you think but they are fantastically useful.
Speaker: Lisa
We are here for accessibility and the conference around accessibility and I want to stress, I am not speaking on behalf of the Deaf Community, I am speaking from my own professional experience and my opinion. The Deaf Community do not consider themselves disabled. They consider themselves for the most part to be a cultural minority with a small population and minority language and interestingly in Australia, sign language was only recognised as an official language in 1992. I find that amazing, only 17 years ago!
Speaker: Floor
Great talk by the way. Maybe if you could comment on deafblind, I know there is a group that is even further marginalised for which there aren't the same degree of solutions and inclusion is even harder.
Speaker: Lisa
I don't actually in terms of social media, none of my work, not much of my work has been around deafblind. What specifically to comment on? In terms of communication, deafblind people typically would sign as well, but they do a hand on hand sign system I don't know much about the technology, I know there was a lot of talk about it, or a couple of sessions last week which were really fantastic, but I don't really work in that area, so I couldn't comment on it. It is very different...
Speaker: Floor
I might be able to help, I know a lot of people who are deafblind use tactile sign language but in terms of digital communication many of them that I have met use screen readers that have professional Braille support, so it comes down to that tactile interface for communication.
Speaker: Floor
What about online?
Speaker: Floor
Again, very much online. A lot of the guys I have come across use JAWS it is the same that I use, the speech output, they use the Braille output because it gives them tactile interface to the same information.
Speaker: BSL speaker from Floor
This is linked to the question that what's his name asked, I don't remember his name. This one with the ginger hair, I am very bad at names. A lot of deaf people actually use webcams and they set up [inaudible], it is really good, you can have 3 deaf people having a conversation at the same time but there is a problem in that if you do start signing at the same time it can be a bit of an issue, so when you set it up you have a "Go ahead" like you do in Typetalk, so the screen comes up and said "It is my turn to sign now" and when you finish you press a button so the next person says "It is my turn" so it is possible to have maybe 5 people, it is not impossible, but it is possible to have 5 people. I think there is something else that is linked to someone at the front said about a lot of technology being developed for deaf people. They can also be for hearing people texting, webcam, hearing people use it as well, it is not just for deaf people. Hearing benefits so much from a lot of deaf and disabled technology. We are quite happy with that.
Speaker: Lisa
That wasn't a question, was it?!
Speaker: BSL speaker from Floor
I was going to ask Lisa, about your disabilities, the big D and little d. With social disabilities, you know the medical model, there is also a social model. Do you look at both of those? What is your view of designing things for social model and also for medical model. There is a social model of deafness with a capital D, a medical model with a small D.
Speaker: Lisa
Do you mean social, I think I was referring to cultural... .
You are asking me how I differentiate between big D and little d. It is actually when we talk about people who come from other countries or other ethnic groups we talk about Italian and a capital I and German with a capital G. And the deaf community is a cultural group. They are just a group of people who speak another language and they can't hear. And so when we talk about cultural deafness, that is what we are talking about. From the medical model the small d deaf, that really refers to people who either have been born deaf and grown up deaf but don't sign and don't identify with the deaf community or don't mix with the deaf community. It might be someone who has lost their hearing through age, through industrial deafness from work, music, all of that sort of thing. I'm fascinated to see how things are going to change and how the number of people requiring captioning and other accessibility is going to change, say in the next 20 years, 10 years, definitely in the next 10 years because there are so many more people listening to music through ear buds. It worries me. I see people all the time, it is true we will have a huge population of deaf people, small d deaf people and it is going to drive me insane. How am I going to communicate with thaim the first thing I want to do when I meet someone who is deaf, I'm being silly, it is not going to drive me insane, but there are going to be a lot of people that are going to have needs based simply on the facts that they have damaged their own hearing so, I don't think I have answered your question. There is difference for me...
Speaker: Floor
No, I wanted to clarify the matter for every one in the room. There is a difference between culturally deaf and medically deaf.
Speaker: Lisa
Has that clarified it?
Speaker: Floor
Can I really quickly add... . You can be [inaudible]...
Speaker: Lisa
NEW SPEAKER: That is a good point. There are hearing people...
Speaker: Floor
[inaudible]
Speaker: Lisa
We are talking about hearing people who belong to the deaf community and even though they weren't born deaf, it may be an adult who lost their hearing at a later age and learned sign and became a member of the deaf community, or also children of deaf adults which often, they see them self as coders. Then there is the interpreting community and everyone else that works around there.
Speaker: Floor
I wanted to really quickly add to I think it was Greg's comment about the applications for deafblind on mobile actually, last week Nokia present an application which can potentially turn every single phone into Braille display. The way they do that is they have 6 dots and if it is an elevated dot it has a different type of vibration, so actually at the moment they are looking for feedback bout this application
Speaker: Floor
I spoke about that.
Speaker: Floor
If you want, you can have a play with it, it is something that can be used for deafblind potentially.
Speaker: Floor
We need to raise awareness as well. More people will learn (not using microphone).
Speaker: Floor
I didn't want to push the microphone on you but to make sure everyone heard that, the interesting thing about that technology is that it is going to raise awareness of the issues as more people get to know it.
Speaker: Floor
I build websites for a living. What kind of barriers are there for people with hearing impairments. The obvious one is use of audio. I am looking for something which we miss like language comprehension.
Speaker: Lisa
In it is a really good question, in terms of creating accessible content through the deaf, and this is something we talked about in detail yesterday, you really need to and it is very important to understand the 2 groups are very different and have different needs, so for the most part, if we are looking at the small D group, of deaf people who don't sign and who have usually have English as a first language, or are fluent in English, that is when we would employ captioning or subtitles. What I have been saying in terms of developing accessible content for the deaf in terms of culturally deaf, big D deaf people, signing deaf, is that ideally we would have sign language interpreters, especially for content that is really important, and I know that it is not possible to provide sign language interpreting for every single multi media, video element on the web, I know that. We can use captioning, but the point is that I want to raise that captioning is something that occurs in the deaf persons second language. So, they need to read something in their second language and it is probably on a website that they have gone to because they want to learn something or find some information, so already you have someone who accessing content that is not in their first language. When it is captioning they are reading it, it is moving faster. It is like watching a really quick dialogue on a foreign film. You are still reading it in your first language but you need to concentrate to read it quickly as the captions move.
What I have been proposing is that, and some people don't agree with me, but that we use something which is a combination of captioning, captioning and subtitling. Captioning is verbatim, word for word, as well as background noises, the door slams the dog barks things that are really important to the context of that film. Subtitles are a translation. There is no written form of sign language, so when we translate it I think the important thing is and this is where my interpreter that comes on, it is not always important to present information word for word. It is not. Sometimes it is important and then we need to find alternative ways of presenting the information, additional ways perhaps through transcripts, but the main thing we need to understand is for the most part what you are trying to do is make the information accessible to people and interpreting it, translating it and putting it into a form that is more readable, it doesn't mean that you are dumbing it down, it means that you are making it easier to hear. Then of course there is other things, just general writing for the web, all those writing for the web, 101, guidelines that you have read in terms of sentence links and use of jargon and use of headings and sub headings, all that sort of stuff, really commonsense stuff does make a difference. Not just to these people but to a whole range of people.
Speaker: Floor
I would like to ask a question because you are very appreciative of the cultural capital D, small d, that sort of stuff. Signing avatars: Yes or no?
Speaker: Lisa
I'm not going to answer that question.
Speaker: Floor
Go on! No answer?
Speaker: Lisa
I'm going to defer to a deaf person, thanks.
Speaker: Floor
I have a friend who works at IBM and he has been doing research into avatars and deaf people. He says they have been developing and in the future, they will be quite cheap, so what... . So interpreters can be replaced. Goodbye Mark! Sorry. But, it is still going to be a problem because avatars don't have the facial expression, there is so much information in faces so avatars will never be perfect. They might give you a lot of information but not the emotions or anything like that.
Speaker: Floor
I want someone to invent signing robots.
Speaker: Floor
A quickie, hopefully. Here in the UK there has been a significant move towards mainstreaming of people with special requirements and need and I was wondering of the the culturally deaf who perhaps have significant issues with reading and English grammar, language et cetera, what sort of percentage are we talking about and is it reducing seeing as they are coming up through the mainstream education system?
Speaker: Lisa
What sort of percentage?
Speaker: Floor
Of the culturally deaf. For example, you might be talking about, which we have issues with reading standards, English.
Speaker: Lisa
I don't know the figure, what you are saying how many culturally deaf people have lower reading level and that sort of thing? I can't off the top of my head remember figures but from what I have read and I am generalising, but generally literacy rates are much lower around form 3 or something, grade 3, high school, so they are quite low. That is not to say that they are not, that the deaf students are not fluent in another language and this is what I really want to stress. We are talking about English literacy and English as they second language. They completely are completely literate in their first
Speaker: Kath Moonan
Thank you very much indeed, Lisa. I hope everyone found that as interesting as I did (applause).
So we are doing really well we are on time. So we are going to break now for an hour and come back at 2.15. On the dot! Or suffer a terrible fate. So on your way out, the food is outside, if anyone is interested we mentioned earlier about our partnership with [inaudible] software, we are offering free scans to anyone who wants an idea. It is not the full picture but an extremely good indication. There is 2 ability net bodies of Diana and Carine so if anyone wants to identify them you can put your name down for an accessibility scan, free scan or at any time during the afternoon. So thank you and we will see you in an hour.
