Indian courier service hires only deaf workers | Hacker News Reader

Indian courier service hires only deaf workers

springwise.com

62 pointsfroggy19 comments

Aside from the obvious reasons, this is also great because it allows the deaf to work in a deaf-friendly work environment; everyone or most there probably sign.

Much of a deaf person's life is spent watching, in silence and isolation, as the hearing people around them communicate freely. Depending on the area, socializing a deaf family member can be a real challenge. Finding a job like this would be a huge help.

Agreed, deaf people are often forced to have later social developments. I believe I received my defining social development at around 15 (note: graduation is much younger in the UK where I'm from) when I was reaching graduation and the shit was about to hit the proverbial fan. I realised that there's a time and place for friends, and certain people are just not friend material (this lesson is still helping me).

Deaf people are often stranded until their mid-twenties or even later to reach these developmental milestones in social relationships. Landing a job in a deaf-friendly workplace would place the deaf person in an ideal situation to develop many of these social milestones long before they ordinarily would.

We're an auditory species by nature, so I can only imagine the isolation one must feel being surrounded by audiophiles when you're forced to be a visuaphile(?).

I've often wondered what would be harder, be blind or be deaf, and since I love music and love to program I really am stuck in the middle, no matter what I'd lose something that makes me in to who I am. Pretty disturbing.

You can program if you lose your sight. TV Raman and Peter Lundblad both work as programmers for Google and are blind.

A friend of mine (Nicolette Mak) has done something similar in the Netherlands, a courier service for handicapped people called 'Valid Express' ( http://www.validexpress.nl/ ). It's a huge success, she now has about 50 vehicles on the road with people that have 'challenging bodies' as she calls it, each vehicle is adapted to it's driver.

Just FYI, I used the word 'handicapped' in conversation recently and brought it to a grinding awkward halt. The preferred term is 'disabled', apparently due to the 'hand in cap' associations of 'handicapped.' YMMV :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism_treadmill

lame → crippled → handicapped → disabled → physically challenged → differently abled

No matter what word you use, you can't change the reality. So that reality eventually "infects" the word. So people pick a different one to try to ignore it.

It only works for a short while, because changing the word does not change the reality. And no matter what word you use people can still use it as an insult.

Thanks, it's always nice to find someone that wants to help you polish your use of a second language, it's appreciated.

Subtle changes like that are hard to get right, I don't usually use that word in English and in dutch it is 'gehandicapte', and I translated that literally.

I sympathize with 'ars' though, whatever you call it the truth is someone has a body with bits and pieces not working the way the rest of us have.

What always bothered me about this, is when a dog loses a leg, the dog instantly transforms into a three legged dog, still competes with his litter mates as though nothing has changed, no special allowances given, none expected. It's literally just another dog. We humans seem to continuously compare the people around us with the 'norm' and we like to label those that are visibly different in a negative way, and those that are visibly different like to draw attention to that fact in demanding we level out the differences.

Interestingly, it's a popular viewpoint in the deaf community (at least here in the USA) that deafness is not a handicap at all and, in the opinion of a minority, is in fact an advantage over those who are hearing.

A free-flow toll road operator in Melbourne did something similar for the licence plate verification operators - they only hired deaf people, and their bosses learnt to sign.

The system automatically identifies the licence plate for tag-less vehicles using digital photography and OCR, but they are supposed to be verified, so the operators flip through the images quickly and look for mismatches.

In Denmark there is a company called Specialisterne (The Specialists) that only hire people with autism as software testers. It's a huge success as some types of autism is perfect for extremely repetitive work as it both improves the actual testing and even better the autist loves it.

http://www.specialisterne.dk/

Neat. There's a group in Cambodia that teaches blind people massage so they can make a living. It's great to help people use the abilities they have.

Good stuff. In my small town one of the two super markets hires people with disabilities and that is one reason I do my shopping there.

A good friend has been deaf since she was about 4. She has accomplished a lot in her life, but many things are difficult for her.

It's inspiring to see entrepreneurs fill gaps that many governments leave behind when it comes to accessibility and the workplace. Thanks for the great post.

Toronto has a similar courier service that only hires people with mental health issues: http://www.awaycourier.ca/

They use public transit for pick-ups and deliveries.

That is a great idea assuming they're not bicycle couriers - that seems pretty dangerous in a city like that.

This is awesome.

yes, it is.

"social element is embedded in the commercial operations" is something I want to remember.

Can't help but think that, should this happen here, someone would try and sue - which is sad.

i saw muhammad yunus (grameen bank) speak a couple years ago and "social element is embedded in the commercial operations" is almost verbatim how he said he thinks about building his businesses.

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