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65 Chapter 3 “vRS Puts Us on Equal Footing with hearing People” The video relay service is intended to be used by Americans who use a sign language to communicate. This is not all deaf people. Quantifying any marginalized population, including people who are deaf, is as much about identity politics as it is about power. That is, who has the power to define, and what does the definition imply? Those who were born with the ability to hear and later became deaf or hard of hearing may be reluctant to disclose their disability. Others, who are born deaf, may not consider themselves to be disabled and therefore may not respond to questions on surveys that ask about “hearing disability.” For these reasons, an exact number of deaf people in the United States is difficult to come by. In 1992 the National Center for Law and Deafness (1992) estimated that “one out of every 100 people is profoundly deaf—unable to hear speech well enough to understand it” (1). However, not all of these individuals will use VRS, as they may not know sign language. Simply being deaf does not make one an ideal user of VRS. Therefore, knowing the number of deaf people in the United States still does not provide a clear picture of who is using VRS. Not every deaf person uses sign language, nor is fluent enough in sign language to benefit from this form of telephone service. (Fluency is not a prerequisite for getting the equipment necessary to use VRS from their home or office—this is a fact that complicates the work of sign language interpreters, especially recent Interpreter Preparation Program graduates.) I have heard that the number of people who have videophones is a small fraction of those who could use them. The reasons for this are tied to geography and employment of deaf people. First, simply having the equipment is not enough to have access. A person must also have highspeed Internet service, which, although more common now, is still an expense . Historically, deaf people have been largely under- and unemployed (National Center for Law and Deafness 1992). While many laws have 66 : chapter 3 been enacted to combat this situation, deaf people are still experiencing the effects of years of oppression that led to under- and unemployment. Second, more rural areas may not have the infrastructure to support the frames per second ideal to make the service effective.17 ThE mAkING OF PUBLIC LIvES Large portions of the lives of deaf persons, as with most individuals who have “spoiled identities” (Goffman 1963a), are public. Deaf people who rely on an interpreter to conduct even the most mundane interactions with non-deaf people are guaranteed very little, if any, privacy. There is always at least one other person present who presumably has nothing to gain from the outcome of an encounter. Even the most conscientious interpreter who maintains the confidentiality of those for whom she interprets , by her mere presence, is still making the lives of deaf people public. Often public space is conceptualized as those areas where people may enter and exit freely. According to Lofland (1989) “the public realm is made up of the public places or spaces in a city, which spaces tend to be inhabited by persons who are strangers to one another or who ‘know’ one another only in terms of occupational or other non-personal identity categories such as bus driver/customer” (454). People pass each other on the street they share as they both make their way to their respective jobs; a customer enters a grocery store and engages the sales clerk about the freshness of the produce. Either way, people’s engagement in public space is limited and often outcome-driven. Those who occupy public spaces are bound by public-space norms. This is not to suggest that the “public realm is more rule-bound than other areas of social life” (Lofland 1998, 27). My point is only that they exist. These norms range from dress to behavior. That is, while there are no formal sanctions, in the United States, for someone wearing his pajamas in public, he may receive a raised eyebrow of disapproval for doing so. Similarly, while a person would not be sanctioned for reading a book in public, she would most definitely face sanctions for choosing to pick her nose in the same public space. A less extreme example is the use of 17. Frames per second refers to the...

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