I have a deaf team mate. He is a great admin who is hungry to learn more. We have moved our meetings to Microsoft Teams for live captions. This has helped all of us immensely.
I've read older HN submissions from deaf community members with great ideas. The articles are old, and I'm sure there are new ideas.
Please help me to help my team mate.
Thanks in advance.
*Edit - I forgot to mention we're 99% remote. Thanks for every suggestion so far.
My biggest recommendation is to use a phone call for audio because he can then use America’s free video relay service for ASL or captioned telephone service. The captions on captioned telephone use both an AI and a human in conjunction, so they are much more accurate.
Try to do some audio-free team bonding exercises. Perhaps charades (with everyone typing answers).
If he uses ASL, learn some and provide resources to other teammates to learn some. Knowing some ASL, at minimum enough to do some small talk, will be a huge sign of respect towards him if that’s his native language.
Finally, something that people might not think about: If he misses something someone said and asks you what it was, never say "it's nothing" or "it wasn't important" or "it was just a joke" no matter how minor the comment was. Just repeat it no matter what.
Have you done this effectively in a work environment?
I’ve also used a video interpreting service for in person meetings (the terp is virtual everyone else is in person). That works well because private interpreter services will take the time to review a slide deck, notes, or a glossary ahead of time and learn any jargon or be prepared to come up with abbreviations with the Deaf coworker.
This is absolutely critical. It's hard enough to interrupt multiple times (especially when you need to ask about the same misheard thing multiple times) and being shut down makes it even harder.
Being Deaf or HoH can be very isolating. Sometimes it's nice (think "built in noise cancellation!"), other times not (feel really left out). Do what you can to include your team mates.
I’m not deaf or hard of hearding but I have ADHD and I might have auditory processing issues and I cannot stand when someone does this.
I think everyone has different tastes (both personal and also in relation to the types of hearing loss they have) and one of my buttons in particular is when people go out of their way to do everything... except ask what I prefer.
For example, if he prefers to do video chats (I myself do), he may appreciate hand raising/visual cues before speaking (to context switch), clear lighting and dimmer backgrounds (to help lip reading/curing), better mics (basically not anything onboard). Additionally, things like someone taking minutes and recording decisions can be helpful for review afterward to clear up misconceptions or assumptions.
It may be that no matter how many video chat accommodations there are, he may not feel completely included and would prefer text of some kind.
I think another important thing is to make him feel welcome to interrupt or say something outside of the meetings, both implicitly and through explicit reminders -- sometimes it turns out that some accommodations don't work out, or someone is just particularly difficult to understand (accents, enunciation), or something just throws it all out the window (people without cameras, suddenly noisy backgrounds, etc) and it can be hard being the odd one out saying "Hey, this actually isn't working."
I think really though, my strongest recommendation would be to keep him actively involved in accommodations without springing anything on him.
Edit: I want to emphasize that I do think it's great that you're reaching out and trying to help! I just also want to emphasize that for some people, loss of agency regarding how they handle their accommodations, no matter how well-intentioned, can feel bad.
Would set up a casual meeting with him to go over what he'd prefer, see what works best for the two of you and the company, and go from there. A big part of dignity is feeling like you have some choice in the matter, to echo OP.
check in with your manager and hrbp before doing so though. you don't want to step on any laws or toes. (and hr may already have a program in place to help)
We also changed standups to mean that only the person holding the Bluetooth mic connected to his cochlear implant could speak: that had the added benefit of stopping standups from falling into solution-finding exercises.
That's wonderful! As the parent of a child with bilateral hearing loss, this accommodation would help immensely in his future work and study environments.
I absolutely hate video conferencing tools. The sound is horrible and live captions are often incorrect. Very few people speak clearly enough for accurate captioning.
I prefer to read and be shown rather than being told. I prefer email, and avoid voicemail.
So if you are trying help your team mate, simply focus on alternatives to talking and listening. The internet is great for learning since so much good material is available in written form.
If this is true of most people, then maybe the finger of blame should not point at the people. Software sucks. That's why we all have jobs.
My only complaint is that these accessibility features should be available to everyone, not gated to free users. At the start of COVID in 2020, Zoom allowed free users to request captions as well and it took a few followups for my account to be enabled. Not sure if they are still offering it.
Have you found a slide towards video occuring across resources?
I can’t stand video as a learning tool, I want to skim read and focus on the bits that I don’t already know.
Where available I go for the transcripts.
I find this frighteningly awesome and blasé.
Be prepared to hear that he doesn’t know what would help. But he will appreciate that you’re giving him agency.
One of the challenges I have with this question as someone who is mainstreamed, profoundly deaf (this means I don’t know sign language) is that deafness takes a number of forms, so there’s no real one size fits all solution.
But far be it for me to point out problems not suggest solutions!
* ask him if it would help to provide a real-time transcription service. This is not an automated system but a specially trained human who will transcribe meetings in real time.
* ask him if he wants someone to write a meeting summary that captures decisions made, action items delegated etc. then make sure that happens.
* ask him if an ASL interpreter would help.
* sign up for sign language courses yourself and use your professional development budget to pay for it. If he doesn’t know ASL ask if he would want to learn also. Pay for his training.
* help him find a professional community of deaf persons to be a part of. Give him options. No group is perfect for everyone.
* the biggest barrier he will face in his life is isolation. So support him so that he doesn’t feel isolated.
* if your company throws company events for everyone to participate in, try to create a something similar, running concurrently, that’s accessible for him. Solicit ideas from him but it could look like a small group chat online or playing games online.
* hearing aids (if he needs them) are REALLY FRICKING EXPENSIVE - benefits typically cover up to $500 and aids can cost $2-7K. Offer to buy his next pair.
This is all off the top of my head. I could probably think of more with some time.
I hope this helps. Thank you for taking the initiative to make him feel part of your team.
(Edit: formatting)
The scale I have seen used includes the terms “mild, moderate, severe, profound”…
… ah. Here’s a chart that might help:
https://www.asha.org/public/hearing/degree-of-hearing-loss/
I’m not an audiologist so while this is a great question I don’t have these answers at my fingertips :)
At any rate, my “definition” was intended to clarify what mainstream meant in this context.
I have seen folks make a related distinction: born deaf or lost hearing.
Then there are some categories which are defined by physiology: some folks can't receive any benefit from cochlear implants because the biological hardware isn't there to interface with.
This just blows my mind: There are folks who fall into the subset of a subset of a subset and thus are so different from me that it's hard to imagine what it is like to be them, and yet, through ASL for example, or games, or so many things, it becomes apparent that they are just like me--and again, not at all. Minds are neat.
I've never been diagnosed with anything officially but I have a stutter problem and I struggle to convert my thoughts to words in real-time. So even for someone like myself I find text preferable to voice/video meetings most of the time anyway. I suspect a lot of non-native speakers probably feel similar too.
Video / voice meetings can be nice to do from time to time for casual meetings such as retrospectives, but when I need to explain something technical I'd rather have time to compile my thoughts and write them down in a way that's clear and easy to understand. Plus if I write it down it's stored on Slack for later reference and it's more accessible for those who struggle with audible communication.
Main factor should be to ask him, to better understand how he "works around". "Best case comparaison" for video conferencing is IRL meetings. Does he feel "comfortable" with IRL meetings assuming proper lightning and face orientation? If not, then it's likely there is no fancy video conferencing that'll be ok, and just forget about video conferencing.
Assuming he reads lips, better video overall: Give all co-workers better cameras and lighting, check that Microsoft Teams doesn't compress stupidly (if it does, maybe try other systems...), have your coworkers frame the camera properly on their face. Better mics if he can hear a tiny bit.
Write minutes live in a shared document.
I obviously don't know what the case is here, but switching to text meetings or live captioning isn't necessarily a full solution for all deaf people.
If you have an "ASL-first" person on your team, it might be extremely useful to take a college course on ASL, if only to learn some fundamentals (sign space, facial expressions as grammatical constructs, etc), a description of deaf culture (like, it exists and varies from region to region), and the inevitable "hey class, let's debunk some myths about deaf people" talk.
(ASL is American Sign Language. Substitute your region's dominate sign language. I did hear that not every sign language is as linguistically rich as ASL?)
[1]https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/ae20c558-ecff-4258-a8e0-...
Also, unless your teammate is actively involved in whatever actions you take, you need to make sure they want help and that they communicate to you what they want help with. The last thing they want is an overconcerned workmate who gets in their business to "help".
This is unacceptable because they have no problem with showing their face in the office instead of concealing it behind a veil.
These people need to be reminded that to be inclusive with this team member, they need to turn their camera on.
I remember one job interview I had, I had my camera on, and the two people interviewing me had theirs off. Difficult situation for me because it makes a difference in communication being able to see the person, and also, a job interview is especially difficult because one wishes to not upset the interviewer. But in retrospect, I think if this situation occurred again I would speak up and ask if it would be possible for them to turn on the camera.
Camera being on or off in meetings can be passive-aggressiveness.
There are many reasons why people might have their cameras off, the main one that comes to mind is that it generally overly impacts women where there is a general (stupid) societal expectation that they have to look 'a certain way' (makeup , hair done etc). Having cameras off can mitigate this.
I personally like cameras on, but it isn't good for everyone, and is not a clear cut decision by any means.
Women, I grant that there is much more effort required on their part.. but here is the thing.. if it's a scheduled business meeting in the calendar, if it was on the physical premises, they would be spending the time anyway on their appearance. So, this is not additional time they would need to spend but already allocated time. So if they are at a remote site, they should still be presentable because they are in the workplace.
What I picked up on early on was that he struggled during face-to-face meetings with reading lips. And I made a conscious effort to turn toward him, speak a little slower and more purposefully, and to reiterate what others said when responding to comments, which helped him tremendously.
That being said, our Org when 100% remote during the pandemic and if anything has made him a stronger member of the team because it forces more non-verbal communication.
They also have a nice a-z list [1] of every disability, limitation, and workfunction. You might find something for yourself that you struggle with and didn't know could be accommodated. Anything from physical limitations to random phobias can be accomodated.
Written documentation of actions are easily referenced and binding.
I wish more people recognized this, instead of expecting everyone else to remember "that thing that we talked about, like, last week".
I imagine it should be possible to create an organization where all communication would be just specification and documentation. I wonder if there is anything that can't in principle be done that way.
If you're lucky. Usually it's “Hey new hire, remember that thing Alice and Bob talked about last year, before they left the company?”
Detailed note taking is a good remedy for the whole "words only last as long as your throat cords vibrate" thing.
Although now that I think about it we're probably pretty close to agreeing, I'm really just pointing out the value of regular old talking as a good escape for when text based communications slow down or fail but implicitly I'm assuming a world where the default is text.. which is what it sounds like you'd prefer.
Words are semantic units, they are by definition and purpose: meaningful.
Speech is also:
* Synchronous
* A faster form of communication than the fastest typers
* A much much faster form of communication than the average typer
* Has incredibly good built-in features for communication like:
* The ability to see who's currently talking
* The ability to communicate a thought almost continuously rather than discretely
* The ability to be interrupted to provide new information when necessary
* Built-in styling features like tone, feeling, volume to emphasize important information
* Built-in synchronous next-speaker negotiation
* Privacy respecting and non-binding which is incredibly important in heavily regulated industries where everything recorded must be very carefully thought out because it might come up in discovery 10 years later
Please understand that I have no problem with remote work; I'm only responding to your implication that face to face meetings are "waste of time".
"when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in
the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head.
In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Many
painters might have thought, this is just something to put
in the background to frame her head. No one will look that
closely at it.
Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting
didn't depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to
look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless.
Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen
details become visible. When people walk by the portrait of
Ginevra de Benci, their attention is often immediately
arrested by it, even before they look at the label and
notice that it says Leonardo da Vinci. All those unseen
details combine to produce something that's just stunning,
like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune."
~ https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
Kudos to you for striving to be inclusive!
EDIT check this out:
"Benefit: More opportunities for quiet voices
In many teams there are a combination of voices, some
quieter and some more assertive. Having this diversity on a
team is really beneficial, but can make it hard for everyone
to be heard. Quiet voices can find it harder to find a space
to interject their thoughts, or prefer to take time to think
about their response before communicating it, risking the
topic ending before the thought is shared.
Text communication doesn’t discriminate against this
difference in communication style. Everyone can share their
ideas at their own pace, and the reader never knows how long
it might have taken to put thoughts into words. There’s no
waiting for turns, and order is more often determined by who
is online when, and what time in their schedule they have
blocked out for messages."
~https://buffer.com/resources/asynchronous-meetings/Why do you think he needs you to post on his behalf?
It's likely the main issue is not his problem but the team's: a lack of documentation for the system or of any reasoned basis for decision-making. And that won't change until the team gives up on deciding what to do based on who-knows-whom with a veneer of process, and instead has honest design discussions and decisions, on the record.
Discrimination can be so subtle that people aren't aware that they discriminate, yet it is damaging.
Deaf people have a word for this phenomen: Hearing Privilege.
Note: I am Deaf myself and sometimes I lend Hacker News my view about my experiences being a Deaf programmer and legal.
Most people just give up when trying to communicate with people that struggle with spoken English as a modality. That can be a profoundly isolating experience.
Perhaps we are still missing the tools to do that effectively.
Crucially, I don’t mean we need another face-to-face/mouth-to-ear communication tool, or yet another way to write the same documents together. We need a new paradigm for thinking collaboratively, and tools to support that.
There’s your free billion dollar idea for today.
Seems to me that the majority of people are extroverts and gain energy from social interactions. Those who are introverts and prefer to research and think are labelled as being on the spectrum by the majority.
I think these are labels we apply to behaviour, which places them squarely under ”fundamental attribution error”.