COVID Blogs: Impact of Face Masks on Communication & Education Opportunities for Deaf People
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By Karen Fischer
Gerard Buckley, a deaf resident of Rochester, New York and the President of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), was checking out at a local grocery store when the cashier, who was wearing a mask, asked him a question. As a deaf person, Buckley couldn’t hear her, and because she was wearing a mask, he couldn’t read her lips, either. Buckley had to take an unorthodox approach to solve a problem that has become common during the pandemic: he pointed to his head. The word “DEAF” was printed across his hat. Upon seeing Buckley’s hat, the cashier used American Sign Language (ASL) to ask the question again, a luxury that isn’t always afforded to deaf and hearing-impaired people.
For Justin LeBlanc, a deaf resident of Chicago and a professor in Columbia College Chicago’s Fashion Studies department, a routine errand at a major hardware store ended very differently. “I tried to use a self-checkout machine and the self-checkout was closed,” LeBlanc said over a Zoom interview. “I was screamed at by an employee wearing [...]