Deaf in DC: A Memoir

46. The Communication Revolution

189 46 The Communication Revolution DEAFNESS IS ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATION OR LACK thereof. In 1967, when I came to Gallaudet, I was amazed at the accessibility of communication despite my limited signing skills. However, this was only among those who could sign. When it came to communicating with nonsigners, the great communication void opened. We didn’t have the benefits of the telephone. When a deaf person needed to make an appointment with a doctor or call a hearing person for whatever reason , he had to ask a hearing person to call. This was a pain, as even the nicest hearing person would make a fuss eventually. They were busy or had other things to do. Then there was the phone bill they had to pay. Hearing children of deaf adults had to start interpreting for their parents from early childhood. Deaf people were dependent for communication on hearing friends, who usually became former friends. In the era before the TTY was introduced, we used to pop up at friends’ homes unannounced and were used to people showing up while we were in the middle of dinner or had our bedroom door closed for some reason. Life was full of surprises, as it should be. The arrival of the TTY in 1970 brought a revolutionary change in communication. Almost overnight, most of us became proud owners of these huge machines. This was high tech at that time. While it was fine for communicating people who had TTYs, we still had to depend on hearing people for calling other hearing people who didn’t own TTY machines. This problem was solved with the relay system, first locally and then nationally. Deaf people were independent to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. We thought TTY was it, but we were wrong. The large TTY machines gave way to small electronic TTYs. Then, with the arrival of e-mail, TTYs began to disappear. There are still some TTYs around but most of them are gathering dust. 190 d e a f i n d c There are new inventions, new gizmos, and new problems! Early in 2000, I visited Gallaudet for a meeting. While walking through the campus , I had an odd feeling that something was wrong. I was used to seeing students signing to each other while going from class to class or building to building. I got an eerie feeling when I didn’t see many students signing. Instead, all of them were walking with their heads bowed, focused on something in their hands and their thumbs punching away at small gizmos as if they were playing Pac-Man. These students were so focused on their gizmos that some of them would walk into each other. They didn’t apologize for these accidents; they just kept punching their little machines. That was the advent of Wyndtell wireless communication tools. Things have gotten a lot worse since then. There are several new machines like BlackBerrys, Sidekicks, and what-not. These new machines not only send and receive messages but do such stuff as browse the Web, make relay calls, send and receive e-mail, and make coffee on the go. Every Deaf and deaf person carries one or other of these little doohickeys. I stayed away from this as long as I could. One couldn’t ignore these machines. They became a part of a deaf person’s dress. I was invited to address a graduating class and met with the group on the evening before graduation. Each of them had their Wyndtells (that was before Sidekick had kicked in) strapped to their belts or to purse straps. They were shocked to learn that I didn’t have one. They looked at each other and looked at me as if I had shown up in jeans at a formal only party. They did manage to make me feel inferior. Once while on a consulting trip to California, I had to stay a couple of additional days and decided to visit some old friends. I asked one of the interpreters if she knew my friend’s phone number. The interpreter said I should try to page him. When I said I didn’t have one of those machines, the interpreter looked so shocked that I decided to get something to strap to my belt as soon as I got home. She whipped out her own Sidekick and sent out a message. Two minutes later, I was in touch with my friend...