Just a fun fact, Black ASL and other sign languages here are often dominated and marginalized by the predominance of ASL and ignorance towards minority communities.
Similar to the effects of forceful dominance of King’s English, other sign languages are facing erasure due to this.
Every Deaf child should have a signed language that fits their culture and community, and lesser known/recognized signed languages should be preserved before they are pushed out over time!!
This is outlined on the International Advocacy page of the National Association of the Deaf:
Please remember ASL isn’t the only signed language in the United States, and other signed languages deserve this much advocacy!
I came across her story a few months ago with this video:
So the moment I saw her face in the video and golden buzzer in the title I started crying because she deserves this and is a great inspiration and call out to deaf people and others to learn about signals.
Seems like barely anyone even cares about the clear and blatant ableism in the movies
My cousin is 75% deaf and losing what he has rapidly. He’s also 7 years old. I remember the day he came up to me with his flurry of hands and slurred speech because everyone was buying his brother spider man stuff and he didn’t have a super hero like him. And I remember leaning in front of him, pulling his hearing aids out and signing the best i could to him about Hawkeye being deaf, and how he was still a super hero and his deafness didn’t make him any less. Granted, it was choppier than that because my signing isn’t spectacular. But his big eyes lit up and he went off running to his dad about Hawkeye. And when he saw the movie, he was so excited, he thought Hawkeye would be signing in the movie. And when he wasnt, when He barely had any lines and when he was hearing, it broke his heart.
Dont tell me ableism isn’t a big deal, or that representation doesn’t matter. Deaf Hawkeye made that little boy feel accepted and happy and the movies stole that from every deaf little boy and girl.
THIS. THIS IS WHY DEAF HAWKEYE IN THE MCU WAS/IS IMPORTANT TO US DEAF/HOH FANS
I absolutely love seeing this photoset getting this attention it’s getting for just because you NEVER see deaf people advocating for deaf people. Not that it doesn’t happen, it happens all the time everyday. It’s not ever In the public eye. the people you always see in the spotlight are hearing people. Hearing people are praised left and right for being deaf educators or interpreters or advocating for deaf people and that’s great, don’t get me wrong. I applaud them for helping the cause, but the face of deaf advocacy should be deaf, at least I think so, and this isn’t something you see a lot of.
So shout out to rikki poynter for this video and highlighting these issues in a humorous way and getting hearing people to understand this
Many states still don’t have a 911 text option. So that means if us deaf people want to make emergency calls, we’d have to use video relay service (which basically works like ft with ASL interpreters who interprets the calls for both deaf and hearing callers). The problem is that video relay service uses up so much data. What if us deaf people are in area that don’t have Wifi and we have to make important life saving calls? We’d end up having to pay extra charges for going over our data plan.
Also, since many of our first language is ASL, we deaf people heavily rely on video chats to connect with our family and friends. Some of us including myself live in an isolated area where there are so few deaf people around. I use video chats/facetime all the time to be able to have human contact, socialize, feel less lonely, and maintain our mental health. It’s not fair that we cannot have as much call hours as hearing people do.
So I have always been extremely embarrassed that my left ear is deaf. I tried to hide it in every way possible. It made me feel broken and useless, especially listening and playing music. My original idea was to put music notes behind my ear, but for some reason the idea just didn’t feel quite right considering I couldn’t hear said music. I came up with the mute symbol idea because lately I have learned to embrace my deafness. I tend to joke around that my left ear is like my mute button when I want to ignore someone. Now I am no longer ashamed and find strength in the humor of my tattoo.
To any Tumblrites who are deaf, hard of hearing, know people who are, or just enjoy cool tech, a start-up called MotionSavvy is working on technology that uses Leap Motion to recognize sign language and and outputs written or spoken English. The project was started by a group of deaf students at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf (yay RIT!) who moved to San Francisco to develop the product with Leap.
The team has over 800 deaf beta testers, but they are looking for more. They hope to have a product available to consumers by September of 2015.
Holding the Bowl 