Deaf Chat Rooms

In a college class that I was required to take called “Developing Multimedia for Accessibility”, I had a teacher that really got under my skin. He had no plan for the class at all and he would just ask us what we wanted to do for the class. The first 5 weeks of class was an endless repeat of the teacher asking us what we wanted to do for the final, which was apparently going to be our entire grade. I decided to stop going to class and come back near the end of the semester when things were solidified. I popped in for one class in the middle of the semester and was amazed at what I heard.

The teacher obviously had no idea of what to teach so he was surfing the net looking for accessibility related materials. He was talking about assistive technologies and how there are many wonderful things that help disabled people to perform many more tasks than they could normally. He came across a link to a deaf chat site and he said, “Would you look at that. That is just fantastic that we now have technology that enables deaf people to be able to chat.” You would think that shortly after making such a statement, he would realize his folly. But no, he spent the 45 minutes that remained in class talking about it. I wanted to just yell at him, “DEAF PEOPLE CAN READ AND TYPE!!!” But I was also curious as to how far he would go on the topic before he eventually realized that deaf people can chat anywhere on the internet. He went on and on about how it was great that deaf people could now have a place where they were able to communicate and that if someone hadn’t thought to start this site deaf people couldn’t chat. As time progressed I wondered what my classmates were thinking about this lesson. Were they as purely annoyed as I was? One guy sitting across the room from me seemed to be the only person that felt as I did. But he did not share my curiosity for how far the ignorance would go. He raised his hand and, in an attempt to derail the Idiot Express, said, “Deaf people can chat anywhere on the internet. I think the only special thing about this site is that deaf people can chat about issues that concern deaf people with other deaf people.” I thought, “Well, he did it. This exciting ride is over.” Just then the kid sitting in front of me proclaimed that he thought the site utilized technology that converted typed words into sign language. As he said this the teacher grew even more excited and a few students joined in the discussion with enthusiasm. I looked at the guy in front of me and drained every ounce of restraint in my body to keep from punching him in the side of his head. So now the class is running with the idea that Deaf Person #1 types in a message on their keyboard, which then is converted to moving hand gestures and seen by Deaf Person #2. Deaf Person #2 then types in a message which is converted to sign language and sent back. If they can both read and type then why would there ever be a need for the sign language conversion?

I watched in amazement as the class discussed what a wonderful idea it was. I feared for society, as it was the largest gathering of purely ignorant people I have ever beheld in real life. (I haven’t ever been to a session of Congress.) I did my final project for the class and got an A. I learned more about the power of stupidity in groups than I did about accessibility.