A commenter in my previous blog  referred me to a glossy website, Communicate With Your Child with the claim that this  website provided unbiased information from many various organizations.  She suggested that I click on “My baby has a hearing loss” section, which leads the viewer to various states that we could research.  She stated “Neutrality is now in the works. It still exists.”  

Is this commenter correct? Does this website actually provide unbiased information from many various organizations?  Has it got neutrality?

 Let’s analyze this website:

1. Count the number of times the words “hearing” and “hear” have been used on the homepage alone.  Total: 11!

2. Count the number of times ASL as a term is used on that same homepage. Total: ZERO

Talk about subliminal messages!

Now, let’s use this checklist to dissect the contents further:

a) Is t bilingual? Check! (English with Spanish translation)

b) Is it trilingual? Mais non.  Nowhere on this website do I see ASL translation.  
c) It has audio for those who may have reading issues: Is it accessible for the Hearing? Check!
d) FOCUS: the ability to hear words and songs. Check!
e) FOCUS: the ability to see ASL words and poetry. Where? Zilch and nada!

I checked “My Baby has a hearing loss” and clicked on states as instructed. This is what I found:

 The number of hearing loss professional organizations like AGBADHH, NICDC, Hearing Association, Let them Hear Foundation, etc etc far outweigh the number of Deaf-centered, or at least ASL-friendly organizations.

 I also clicked on http://www.raisingdeafkids.org which is on the list for any of the states you click on: Go to Communication choices, then you will see:

- Auditory-Oral, (Emphasis: Hearing/speaking)
-Auditory-Verbal (Emphasis: Hearing/Speaking)
-Bilingual-Bicultural- ASL and English (Emphasis: Bilingual Language Development)
-Cued Speech (Emphasis: Hearing/speaking)
-Total Communication (signing and talking with voice simultaneously… Emphasis: still hear and speak)

Consider the evidence submitted above.  One cannot help but reach the following conclusion:

 There’s an overwhelming emphasis on hearing and speaking, and little focus on ASL.  Therefore, this website is NOT unbiased.  It’s in fact heavily biased in favour of the hear-and speak ideology.  It’s got NO neutrality.

 But it’s sure got audism.

Into which category do we Deaf people fit? Race or Disability? Well, this vlog is a sequel to the first vlog (The Canadian Definition of Audism). In that vlog, the CHS (Canadian Hearing Society) is of the view that Deaf people are not only disabled, but also an ethnic (race) minority.

How might we use existing legislation to combat attitudinal barriers? We may do so upon racial and disability grounds. Before I explain how to do this, I must first explain what happened during Gary Malkowski’s presentation Breaking Attitudinal Barriers in Policy and Practice. He asked his audience, one of which I was, this question: Which category do you think Deaf people fit into? Race or Disability? Gary then qualified this by explaining that race no longer has to do with biological characteristics, such as skin colour. Race includes these characteristics: accent or manner of speech (or language), culture, history, beliefs and practices, traditions and social constructs”.
Silly question, I thought, with a tinge of arrogance. Race, of course, especially since we have all these characteristics of a race! I don’t accept disability as a label for us! Gary’s answer startled me. He said: We fit into both racial and disabled categories. He explained that since we claim disability tax, use ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program), and use ADP (Assistive Devices Plan) in which the government pays half of what it costs to obtain TTY, and other devices we need, we have accepted the label of disability for ourselves. So, that indeed means we are both a race and a disability group. So what do we do? How do we use legal means to combat attitudinal barriers? Two significant pieces of Human Rights legislations are as follows:

ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT (AODA):

•Remove attitudinal barriers that discriminate against people with disabilities

•Eliminate systemic barriers in organization’s policies, practices or procedures that discriminate against people with disabilities

•Engage in public awareness activities designed to raise employer and service providers awareness of disability issues and to combat negative attitudes and stereotypes about persons with disabilities

Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policies and Guidelines

•Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial Discrimination

•Policy and Guidelines on Disability and the Duty to Accommodate

•Policy and Guidelines on Accessible Education (this component will not be discussed here.)

(Malkowski, 2010)

Although we can use AODA to help us break down attitudinal and discriminatory barriers, OHRC is a significant piece of legislation. It needs to be made clear that racism and audism are both attitudes. The former is the ideology that one racial group is inherently superior to other racial groups. The latter is another ideology that to be hearing is superior to those who are deaf; have hearing loss. However abhorrent these attitudes are, we cannot take racists and audists to a human rights tribunal just on the basis of these attitudes. We cannot prove anything.

But, when these attitudes and ideologies manifests themselves openly in language and behaviours that are discriminatory against, for instance the Deaf, out of unfounded concern for safety. This then poses barriers. The use of discriminatory language in policy for instance, then becomes grounds for complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

This indeed happened in BC (British Columbia), where the Ministry of Transportation imposed a policy against Deaf people driving 18-wheelers due to safety concerns. So, of course this prevented Deaf truckers from getting trucking jobs there.

The Ministry of Transportation got hauled before the Human Rights tribunal. The lawyers for the discriminated deaf drivers asked the government for the premise they came up with for their discriminatory policy. The Ministry of Transportation pointed to the medical association in BC, who recommended that Deaf people not be allowed to drive large trucks for safety reasons. When challenged on this, the medical association revealed they based this recommendation on the number of elderly people who lost their hearing and got into vehicular accidents.

Needless to say, none of the Deaf complainants were elderly. Their lawyer called in an insurance company and asked for their statistics. The company answered that statistically speaking , deaf drivers had better than average driving records due to the fact that driving is a visual skill, and that many Hearing people tended to be distracted by music or using the cellphone. As a result, the discriminatory policy was scrapped. That is how we can use the Ontario Human Rights Commission Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial legislation to combat discriminatory policies and practices that are rooted in racial and or audist attitudes. (Malkowski, 2010)

Here’s a scenario: Your employer refuses to provide you with an interpreter based on his perception that he would experience financial undue hardship as a result of providing you. This unwillingness “to use or put accommodations in place because of cost seems almost reasonable until faced with the Duty to Accommodate” (Malkowski. Vibe’s The Canadian Hearing Society Magazine, Spring/Summer 2003) Malkowski revealed during his presentation that the Ontario government has financial assistance available to support small businesses in meeting their duty to accommodate. Should your employer refuse to provide an interpreter for you, he would have failed in his duty to accommodate, and that would be grounds for you to bring your complaint to the Human Rights Commission using the OHRC Policy and Guidelines Disability and the Duty to Accommodate.

Remember, as a racial group, we Deaf people may may use the OHRC Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial Discrimination to break down attitudinal barriers. As a disabled group, we may use the Duty to Accommodate component of the OHRC if we are denied accommodations that we require.

1.

“I can’t hire you beause you’re deaf.”
“It isn’t a safe environment for someone with a hearing loss”
“I can’t promote you to supervisor because of your hearing loss.”
“ASL is a “fun language”, less important than English.”
“I can’t rent this apartment to you because you’re deaf.”
“Deaf people must learn English (forget ASL) because when they grow up they will have to function in the hearing society and need it to find jobs, find happiness and have a full and useful life.”

(Malkowski. The Canadian Hearing Society Magazine. Spring/Summer 2003 and Malkowski.Removing Attitudinal Barriers and Audism in Policy and Practice. 2010)

2.

“I can’t hire you because you’re black.”
“It isn’t a safe environment for a woman”
“I can’t promote you to supervisor because of your Jewishness.”
“Spanish is a “fun language”, less important than English.”
“I can’t rent this apartment to you because you’re Iraqi.”
“ Immigrant people must learn English (forget Spanish) because when they grow up they will have to function in the [American] society and need it to find jobs, find happiness and have a full and useful life.”

Which set of statements would get people outraged, and upon what grounds? The second set, of course, because they are either blatantly racist, or sexist.  The outrage would spill over into the media, in government buildings, in human rights tribunals.  Many in the majority group would side with women, racial groups on this, and justifiably so.

Yet, the silence is resounding when it comes to the first set of statements.  They are blatantly audist.  How many people would speak up? Admittedly, my choice of words in the first and second sentences of this paragraph could be construed as audist .  This just goes to show just how pervasive this type of language is in this society.  To wit: I obtained Mike Schmidt’s permission to use his vlog from Facebook.  This vlog will show exactly how pervasive the negative perception of the Deaf is, and how the term deaf has such negative connotations:

In his vlog, Mike called for a change in the use of language when it comes to the term deaf, and I agree that it is necessary to challenge the audist language as applies to us Deaf and Hard of Hearing people.  The language as shown in text in Mike’s vlog are actually deaf slurs, in the same vein as racial slurs.  This language reflects the attitudinal bias, which is audist in nature.  Audism is so similar to racism in attitude, and is reflected in discriminatory language and behaviours that uncannily resembles those of racial discriminatory language and behaviours.

During his March 10, 2010 presentation, Removing Attitudinal Barriers and Audism in Policy and Practice, Malkowski calls on us Canadians to challenge the attitudes and discrimination using both the following pieces of legislation:

• Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policies and Guidelines: Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial Discrinination

• Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act,

both significant Human Rights legislation pieces in Canada, made stronger by the fact that Canada just became the 82nd country to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in New York.