Have Hearing Aid, Will Travel (But Would Prefer Not)
Being hard of hearing during a pandemic was hard enough
Everything changes yet stays the same
It’s 2023. Nearly everyone is connected nearly all the time. Smart phones are ubiquitous. Deaf and disabled people have existed since the beginning of time.
Yet we still don’t have accessible public spaces.
Certainly things have improved since the dark ages, but nowhere near in line with other advancements our society has made. The first nation-wide accessibility law didn’t come into effect until 2018.
The year two-thousand and eighteen, a mere five years ago at the time of this writing. That’s pretty pathetic, considering the first human went into space in 1961, and the Internet became publicly available in 1991 (that was thirty-two years ago).
I recently had the unpleasant experience of flying. Going through security there is no way to communicate if you cannot hear or speak. There are signs explaining the rules and procedures, but if someone needs to ask you a question or speak to you, you’d either have to write back and forth or have an Interpreter called in.
Waiting to board the plane is worse. There are gate changes announced, which you wouldn’t know about unless you repeatedly check the departures screens, or have alerts sent to your phone. Okay, I can do that.
Then there’s actually getting onboard. They call people in groups. To which group do I belong? Should I go first, with those who need additional assistance, to sit on a stuffy plane and wait? How do I know when they’ve called for that group of travellers? I don’t actually need assistance if I can figure out when it’s my turn… but when is it my turn?
They announce which rows or zones are boarding, but there is nothing visual to indicate what they are saying. They have screens right there behind the desk indicating which flight is at that gate and when it’s expected to depart, they could easily adapt those computers to display announcements for Deaf and hard of hearing travellers.
Lastly, there are announcements during the flight. Some of the larger, newer planes will have the security spiel by video including closed captions, but not all of them. This time I travelled on a small plane which didn’t have any on-board entertainment, so there were no screens at all.
I would not have been aware of any announcements made during the flight. I could identify myself to a flight attendant and let them know I need to be directly informed of any important announcements, but that requires them to remember to do so, and I would be quickly forgotten in the event of an emergency.
Airport security, circa 2021
Apparently, they had been trying to ask me to do something, but I couldn’t hear them. I still couldn’t figure out what they wanted, even after my son had directed my attention to them.
Usually, I don’t hear someone if my back is turned, but I’m a very good lip-reader and can understand as long as I am looking at them. Thanks to the Covid pandemic, that is no longer a possibility, as everyone is wearing masks.
I’m grateful the simple act of wearing a piece of cloth over our mouth and nose helps reduce the spread of the virus. What frustrates me (and probably airport staff as well), is this communication barrier need not exist.
Why Are We So Behind the Times?
We live in a world where technology rules. Everywhere you look, there are digital signs updated by the second, indicating whether a flight is on-time or the gate has been changed.
The entire airport and airplanes run on computer systems. 99.9% of the people in the airport are carrying at least one electronic device on their person, including – maybe especially – young children.
My father-in-law, who is nearly 70 years old, recently had a full conversation with a gentleman using Google Translate because they didn’t speak the same language.
With so many useful tools at our disposal, why am I still being shouted and waved at in the middle of an airport, being made to look and feel like a complete idiot?
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