Speaker : Svetlana Kouznetsova
Transcript of Svetlana's Presentation
(Video: It has 3 parts: slides on the left, a video recording of Svetlana on the right, and captions on the bottom. Slide: Accessibility for Deaf People: Beyond Video Captions And Sign Language. Svetlana Kouznetsova (Sveta). TechExeter Conference 2021. September 8, 2021.)
Hello! Thank you for tuning in.
I’m an independent consultant and advise businesses on accessibility of their web, media, and events to disabled people.
Hey wait, your device sound is okay. I just wanted to make a point. Imagine how we deaf and hard of hearing people deal with communication and information barriers on a daily basis. I will discuss our experiences in today’s talk.
To those who cannot see me, I’m a fair skinned brunette in a red top. A bookcase is behind me.
(Slide: “hearing impaired” crossed out)
I would like to mention that the word “hearing impaired” is not preferred by many deaf and hard of hearing people. So when referring to us as a group, please use “deaf and hard of hearing.” If you are not sure how to reference an individual, ask. For the remainder of this talk, I will reference “deaf people.”
(Slide: “World Total: 466 million”)
There are 466 million of us in the world. Deafness is an invisible disability. You may not be able to tell that I’m deaf unless you see me wearing a cochlear implant or using sign language. You may think I’m ignoring you when you’re trying to get my attention. I’m not ignoring you on purpose, of course! There are so many misconceptions about deafness. Let me share a few examples.
When people think about deafness, the image often comes up as a senior citizen using a hearing aid. But look at me. I’m deaf, but I’m not that old. I grew up wearing hearing aids. Now I have a cochlear implant.
Actually, more young people are going to doctors’ offices, because they have lost some hearing - mostly from exposure to loud noises. They’re listening to music with earbuds on high volume, or going to loud concerts.
Continuous exposure to loud noises is the number one cause of hearing loss. Age is number two, and number three is disease or accident. That’s what happened to me.
I was born with good hearing to parents who can hear. No one in my family has a history of deafness or any disability. When I was two years old, I got sick with meningitis. It was so bad that I became profoundly deaf. I’m part of 90-95% of deaf people who come from hearing families. Many deaf people also have hearing kids. So genetic deafness is very rare.
Many think that all deaf people know sign language. The vast majority of them don’t know sign language. They use primarily spoken languages. Most of them are hard of hearing people, individuals with progressive hearing loss, late-deafened adults, and deaf people who had intensive speech therapy at a very young age - like me.
I didn’t use sign language when growing up. My first language is Russian. That explains my accent. :0) I took English as a foreign language in a Russian school. It was British English. Imagine my confusion when moving here to the USA. I wondered why Americans say “pants” instead of “trousers” or why an U is missing in “color.”
I learned American Sign Language, my fifth language, as an adult by constantly interacting with people who are native or fluent signers. Like with any language, you need full immersion. Many deaf people don’t have this opportunity.
Also, sign languages are not the same in every country. For example, American Sign Language is completely different from British Sign Language. Their difference is more pronounced than the difference between American and British English.
If deaf people can communicate well orally, it doesn’t mean that they can understand everything and everyone, even with hearing aids and implants. Those devices don’t cure deafness. Hearing doesn’t equal understanding.
For example, you may see Chinese characters clearly, but you can’t understand what they mean. Same with hearing devices. Some people like myself can recognize only environmental sounds while others can understand speech but not 100%.
Many people assume that we can lipread everything and everyone. Lipreading is not magic. You can see only about 30% of speech. The rest is a lot of guesswork. It’s very taxing on our deaf brains. That’s why many of us need additional visual access.
If you want to communicate with a deaf person, it’s best to ask them by writing down: “How do you prefer me to communicate with you?”
Please do not ask us how much we can hear, or if we can speak or lipread. You are making us accommodate you when it should be the other way around. If you have no patience, deaf people may bluff, and communication would fall apart.
Deafness is not a black and white issue. It’s not either you can hear or not. Deafness really ranges along a continuum from mild to moderate to profound hearing loss. People have a variety of communication needs and abilities. I cover that in detail in my workshops on deaf awareness.
(Slide: “websites”)
Now, I want to talk about websites.
When you think about web accessibility for deaf people, video captioning comes to mind. Yes, that is one of the issues. But I also want to mention another issue that many people don’t think about.
(Slide: An online form. It has fields for name, email, and phone that are required, a comments area, and a submit button.)
Online form as you see here. You’re thinking: “What’s wrong with that?”
It has a phone number field and requires me to fill it out. Obviously we can’t hear on the phone. Some people can speak on the phone, but they may have a hard time understanding you.
Many of us prefer to communicate directly through email, text, online chats, and video calls. Because it’s 2021! Pretty much everybody is texting.
(Slide: A smartphone with 2021 on it. Icons of phone, email, texting, and video are circling it.)
The internet and smartphones equalized communication between deaf and hearing people. Many of us can communicate with each other via text or video. More hearing people prefer to use text instead of phone calls, especially millennials and introverts.
So I advise you to offer more options for your customers to communicate with you via email, texting, instant messaging, online chats, and video calls. Please don’t limit yourself and your customers to phone calls only.
Also, consider hiring deaf people for call center positions so that your deaf customers who use sign language can communicate with them directly via video.
(Slide: “events”)
Now, I want to talk about how to approach different events.
When I’m talking about events, that can be any type of opportunity to engage with deaf people. It could be a one-on-one conversation, a group discussion, a classroom, a business meeting, a small event, or a large-scale conference. It could happen in person, or virtually. Most events have been virtual lately since the pandemic started.
(Slide: A person in front of audience.)
I enjoy attending some events that are accessible to me. However, there are many others that are not. Even not all diversity and inclusion events are accessible! Imagine that! It’s not enough for us to be invited to events. We need access services to feel fully included.
Often non-disabled people deny our requests for our preferred access services or make decisions on access services that do not fit our needs or are of lower quality. That’s frustrating.
I often receive comments from organizers saying: “Hey, you’re the first deaf person who’s ever asked for communication access. I’ve never had this before.”
Please keep in mind that there are many deaf people who are not aware of their rights, or are afraid of speaking up, or are just tired of fighting for access.
Trust me, many of you may have already met a deaf person but haven’t realized it, because deafness is an invisible disability.
Accessibility is important for us. It is our right.
There are many various types of access services including but not limited to live captioning, sign language interpreting, oral interpreting, cued speech transliteration. Assistive listening devices are typically used by people who benefit from hearing devices. Preferential seating might be requested.
Solutions vary from event to event and from person to person. I help organizations with optimal accessibility strategies for their events as well as for their web and media.
I also have over 20 years of experience working with sign language interpreters, captioners, and various access service providers nationwide and worldwide. They are not created equal. Some are good. Others are not.
(Slide: “ethics”)
When working with interpreters and captioners, it is important that they not only provide high quality services but also show sensitivity and respect to deaf people by following the code of professional conduct, or code of ethics. (Conduct??)
It’s a complicated topic that is out of the scope of this presentation, but it’s a very important issue not to be taken lightly. There will be a link to an article about this at the end of my presentation.
(Slide: “media”)
Now, I want to talk a little bit about media accessibility.
(Slide: “Captioning is an art.”)
Many of you know that it’s captions and transcripts. However It is more than just adding text. Captioning is an art. It needs to be accurate and properly formatted to improve the experience for deaf people.
(Slide: “auto captions” crossed out)
Don’t just turn on auto captions. Many deaf people call them “cRaptions.” Bad captions are not better than nothing, especially for professional content. They cause cognitive dissonance for us deaf people.
My TEDx talk explains this more. The link to the video will be provided at the end of my presentation. It has captions in English and subtitles in other languages.
If your presentation has videos, make sure to caption them in advance. Even if a live captioner or an interpreter may be provided during your presentation, you still need to prepare captions to improve the experience for deaf people.
Live captions and pre-recorded captions are not the same thing. Live captions are meant to be used in real time for events, webinars, or news broadcasts. Pre-recorded captions are used for movies, video recordings, and post-production media in general.
Live captions from an event need to be properly edited for video recordings.
If you want to share audio and video online, make them accessible on all platforms before publishing. Please don’t leave out deaf people, or make them wait for access, or tell them to use auto captions.
It happens often, even with content about accessibility by non-disabled advocates! Imagine that! Honestly, it saddens me that of all people, they would leave us out, intentionally or not.
There’s a saying in the disability community: “Nothing about us without us.”
Captioning access is a large topic that I cover in detail in my consulting.
(Slide: “pandemic”)
Lastly, I would like to mention one major challenge that deaf people experience during the pandemic.
(Slide: 2 faces. One with a mask equals to one without a mouth.)
Masks. Yes, masks. As someone who relies on lips, I feel like everyone in a mask has no mouth! It’s very frustrating for many of us deaf people. For safety reasons, we wouldn’t want people to pull down masks for us, but we also cannot lipread them. We don’t have x-ray vision! We would also love to see a smile!
Fortunately, there are many clear masks out there that you can use to communicate with deaf people. Some are professional. Some are hand made. I cannot advise which one is the best or the safest. But there are two things to consider - anti-fog and anti-glare. A mask that fogs up is as useless as a regular mask. I will share a link to an article about clear masks later on.
Also, please keep in mind that clear masks still do not eliminate the need for interpreters or text access. Lipreading does not provide full access. Text access means writing down, or typing on your device, or using speech technology.
(Slide: “Let’s think outside the ears!”)
Now, I am ending my presentation with my motto: Let’s think outside the ears!
We live in a very audio-centered world. Many people don’t realize that communication and information [exchange] doesn’t only have to come through one way - hearing and speech. There are many different ways. I encourage all of you to think outside the ears.
(Slide: links - to be mentioned next)
If you want to learn more about accessibility solutions, here is my info on about.me/svetlanakouznetsova.
That’s my first and last names.
You can also find my TEDx talk on bit.ly/TEDxCaptions,
an article about clear masks on audio-accessibility.com/clear-masks/,
an article about codes of ethics on bit.ly/InfoOnCodesOfEthics.
Feel free to contact me via email or private messaging if you have any questions.
Thank you all for joining me!