Day 3 of NAD Conference

My internet at the hotel completely died halfway through my stay, so it will take me a few days to get caught up on the second half of the NAD conference…

Friday was my 3rd full day of the NAD conference.  Brandt was able to join me in Philadelphia last-minute on Thursday night, which was a huge relief because I was feeling very socially isolated by my lack of ASL communication ability.  Our first workshops was “Federal Enforcement and Deaf Advocacy in Health Care and Vital Human Services,” given by a Regional Manager at the Office for Civil Rights at the US Department of Human Services, Paul Cushing.  He educated the audience about the different laws that “prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability” and guarantee Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing patients the right to “auxiliary aids” (including qualified ASL interpreters, assistive listening devices, phone amplifiers, video interpreters, and captioning) to provide “effective communication.”  Several of the audience members recounted times that they were either denied access to an interpreter, or were forced to pay for an interpreter out of their own pockets.  They were surprised to learn that it is the responsibility of the medical care service provider (such as doctor’s office or hospital emergency room) to provide and pay for all necessarily auxiliary aids.  Even if the Deaf person is not the one receiving the medical treatment, such as if a Deaf woman’s Hearing mother is in the emergency room, the Deaf person still has the legal right to an ASL interpreter.  Mr. Cushing encouraged the audience to file a complaint if they believe they have been denied the right to effective communication regarding their medical care—it must be done within 6 months of the discriminatory event.

Our second workshop was actually a commission, called “Captioning for Access: Here, There, and Everywhere.”  Instead of a structured lecture, this was a discussion about the need for more captioning access, run by members of a technical working group for the FCC, where audience members were encouraged to share their frustrations about the lack of captioning and brainstorm ideas for how to achieve more access.  Topics brought up by the audience included: delays on HDTV closed-captioning, placement of captioning that obscures the action in sports games, poor transcription quality on YouTube videos, lack of captioning on Netflix Instant View movies, and lack of captioning in movie theaters.  Karen Peltz Strauss with the FCC encouraged audience members to file a complaint if they experience problems with: closed-captioning on television, access to emergency information on television, telecommunications relay services, and telephone equipment services.  You can also e-mail her directly at:  Karen.Strauss@fcc.gov.  I found out on Saturday that there is a Deaf blogger named Tayler Mayer, owner of the website DeafRead, who has been blogging on the NAD conference.   He wrote a great synopsis of the commission on captioning.

Brandt and I ate lunch at the famous Reading Terminal Market, which houses over 80 restaurants and shops.  Many of them are operated by the Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish).  The most amazing thing about the market, though, was seeing Deaf people signing to each other at practically every shop, restaurant, and diner.  At every turn of a corner, there were more Deaf people deep in happy communication.  I tried my best not to be rude and stare, but it was hard not to.  It was a fascinating interplay of two cultures who are probably both used to being stared at when they are out in the mainstream public.

The two afternoon workshops were on theoretical aspects of ASL.  Theory has never been my strong suit, so I can’t possible do these workshops justice in my attempt to summarize and explain them.  “Whose ASL Is It? Is ASL Culturally and Linguistically Diverse?” was presented by Arkady Belozovsky, a lecturer in ASL/Deaf Studies at Brown University.  He is fluent in ASL, Russian Sign Language, and Gestuno (International Sign Language).  He spoke about the popularity and spread of ASL throughout the world, in large part due to international students attending Gallaudet University and bringing ASL back to their home countries.  He is upset by the continued teaching and use of Signed Exact English, which is a created form of Manually Coded English—signs used in English word order.  SEE is not an actual language, and uses invented signs for prefixes, suffixes, verb tenses, etc. that are not used in ASL.

The last workshop, “A New Theory of Sign Language,” was given by Jeffrey Mansfield, an architecture Master’s student at Princeton and board member of the Boston Access Advocates for the Deaf.  His presentation was fascinating, but the theory was so above my head that instead of trying to summarize it, I will just quote the description from the program:

“Revisit ASL linguistics and cultural identity in a broader cultural framework and learn about the rich complexity of American Sign Language and the Deaf experience. Starting with the work of post-structuralists Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, this presentation navigates through Huxley's Brave New World, Derrida’s performative and McLuhan’s media ecology before examining responses from Baudrillard and deaf artists Aaron Williamson, Louise Stern, and Christine Sun Kim.  Joseph Grigely’s Textualterity will be explored in parallel with the field of cymatics, as well as Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius,” the Stokoe Notation, and quantum theory to present a staggering and previously unacknowledged complexity vis-à-vis ASL and the Deaf experience.”

I have to point out the phenomenal job done by the ASL interpreters and CART transcriptionist in this workshop; they were worriedly preparing for the presentation before it started, reviewing all their notes, but they did an excellent job.

My next post will be on the Miss Deaf America pageant!