Today I met a deaf person, I have never met a deaf. That is so odd to say I havn’t realize it, I only knew of deaf people through movies, books, and tv.
This deaf person was actually a job recuriter and they had a translator for them to translate and communicate with me. I struggled to pay attention to the deaf person because the translator will speak in your ear as you look at the deaf person. Which is a different form of communication because when you talk to someone you are directly looking at this person while you speaking and listening vice versa.
The job role they were hiring for was a referal specialist to connect a deaf person with a translator to help that deaf person do basic things.
I.E.
- schedule a doctors appointment
- order pizza
- buy a car
- groceries
While hearing about this problem, I felt complete sense of sympathy or is it empathy in my body. Some sort release I felt in liver or gut, its a sensation I only ever felt once before in college. It never occured to me, how diffcult something so simple for us could be but not for others basically the state of MA is hiring for this position a Referral Specialist.
"Referral Specialist will discuss with you on the request as well as recommending quantities of interpreters and CART providers for the request."
Then the kicker for the deaf person is that you pay for the interpreter/CART services cost? and gas for the interpreter to come out.
Mabye they don’t want pity from others or us to feel bad for them. However, I realize I don’t have the skill sets to be referral person. I simply said I am not qualified.
However, after I left I kept thinking about a application that could be used to record video of someone using ASL, and then the phone translates the sign language live into a speaking voice.
I did find some apps that did do this but only translate in plain text english not a full voice for people.
I think I want to build phone applications to try do achieve this.
Iphone App -> Video -> translate to voice + text on screen.
Would anyone like that? It made me think does this problem need a techological solutions its such a human problem? I don’t know mabye I should ask.
https://old.reddit.com/r/deaf/comments/ucyzet/am_hard_of_hearing_person_please_suggest_some/
https://old.reddit.com/r/deaf/comments/capufw/deaf_people_of_reddit_what_is_a_useful_iphone_app/
https://old.reddit.com/r/deaf/comments/capufw/deaf_people_of_reddit_what_is_a_useful_iphone_app/