Archives for May 2003

This originally appeared in The Tactile Mind Weekly in Trudy’s ON HAND column.

It sounded pretty good. For less than $20 a month, I’d get legal advice. I thought Pre-Paid Legal was a great idea, especially since I work mostly on a contractual basis. Plus the PPL representative, a person who works within the captioning industry, emphasized that PPL was deaf-friendly. They even had a toll-free TTY number. So I signed up, and was assigned a law firm in Chicago.

Every time I called the firm for a matter, it was a major hassle. The receptionist would say, usually after the relay operator explained what relay was, that an attorney would respond via e-mail. That never happened. I called the customer service TTY number – and got an answering machine. My representative assured me PPL was looking into this.

I had several contractual situations that I didn’t bother seeking advice for because every time I called the firm, I’d deal with hang-ups and non-responses. In one instance, I received a postcard, a month after I called, saying the firm had tried to call me several times (not true, according to the answering machine and caller ID). When I called to follow up, the person said, “Oh, I see you do have a request here for relay or e-mail. What’s relay? No, we didn’t call you because you asked for an e-mail response.”

I asked my representative to cancel my membership. After a flurry of e-mails full of tactics trying to prevent my cancellation, I threw a hissy fit. He finally revealed, after a couple of days, that I had to cancel by calling the voice number. As of now, it’s “being processed.” We’ll see.

Maybe I was just an isolated case. The firm did help with one contract at the beginning, and I’ve heard good things about PPL. I don’t care. When a company isn’t deaf-friendly as it claims to be and doesn’t ensure that its law firms are accessible, I’m done wasting my money.

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This originally appeared in The Tactile Mind Weekly in Trudy’s ON HAND column.

Within the past year, we’ve lost several deaf community members: Jerry Strom, Frank B. Sullivan, Sharon Kay Wood, Polly Peikoff, and Clayton Valli, to name a few. A deaf person’s death always seems to affect me directly, even if I didn’t quite know that person.

I was nearly 14 when my mother notified me that Greg Clark had died. I had known Greg since I was a baby. He also was my favorite camp counselor, and the first person I knew who had an earring through his left nipple. Even today, years later, I still feel a sense of disbelief about his death.

During my sophomore year at Gallaudet, there was at least one death from each class, a total of eight people. It was a surreal year. Life seemed even more vulnerable than it already was for me.

Today, as I think about all these deaths, I think about how much each person brought to the deaf community. With all the rapid changes within the deaf community, in terms of technology, does each death mean one less member of the already-dwindling community? Will their lives and accomplishments exist in people’s memories in 20 years? Will our young deaf generations know–or will they want to know–these people?

I can only hope that when it’s my time to go, I’ll have affected at least one life as much as these people have affected mine.

Copyrighted material. This article can not be copied, reproduced, or redistributed without the written consent of the author.

This originally in The Tactile Mind Weekly in Trudy’s ON HAND column.

I’ve gotten a free round-trip ticket, six coupons for free meals at Wendy’s, and a $20 gift certificate for Old Navy, simply because I wrote letters.

Oftentimes an ignorant worker does something stupid because he doesn’t know how to deal with a deaf person or just doesn’t care. Every deaf person has encountered this. A perfect example: when I called Vanguard Airlines via relay to make three reservations a few years ago, the customer representative said (I kid you not), “Oh my God. This is going to take forever. Why don’t these stupid people just have their damn relatives call for them or something?”

I do what any consumer should do when s/he doesn’t get satisfactory service: I write a letter of concern (not complaint) to the company. In response to my e-mail, Vanguard sent me a free ticket, two drink coupons, and informed me that because my particular call had been monitored, the representative was fired on the spot.

I don’t always do this for every incident; that’d be time-consuming and frivolous. But imagine if we all wrote letters to companies that weren’t so deaf-friendly–and asked, politely but pointedly, for better service. Think we’d make a difference?

Perhaps. But the freebies aren’t so bad.

Copyrighted material. This article can not be copied, reproduced, or redistributed without the written consent of the author.

This originally appeared in The Tactile Mind Weekly in Trudy’s ON HAND column.

The recent publicity about a captioner screwing up a television report about Federal Reserve Board Chairperson Alan Greenspan’s enlarged prostate when she mistakenly typed “enlarged prostitute” got me thinking about the captioning industry and its job opportunities.

How come I don’t know of any Deaf person that works for the major captioning companies? Isn’t that odd?

I asked a few of my Deaf friends who work in prominent positions within the Deaf community: relay administration, education, and so on, to see if it was just me. None of them knew anyone who worked for the major companies.

This perplexes me. Deaf people are involved at practically every level when it comes to captioning issues, consumer, advocacy, and legislation. Where are the deaf people at the administration or even entry levels within these captioning companies?

I’m not quite sure why there seems to be very few or no deaf employees. Maybe, as evident from the dumbing down of captions on shows like SESAME STREET, the captioning companies think our language or communication skills aren’t qualified for whatever position within their companies. Or maybe Deaf people just haven’t applied for jobs at these companies.

I have about twenty different theories about why there aren’t Deaf employees, but I’ll spare you. Whatever the reason–captioning is an essential part of our lives; it’d be terrific if we could give back to these companies.

Perhaps, after this story runs, I’ll find out about a Deaf employee at a captioning company. I certainly hope so.

Copyrighted material. This article can not be copied, reproduced, or redistributed without the written consent of the author.