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Comment by Khelavaster | Hacker News Reader

It's a little obtuse to "pretend to be deaf" and not use text relay...

No, it really isn't.

I mean, I woke up one day and was half blind. Well, I could see out of my left eye, but it was all a blur. "Yes, I know that's a big E at the top of the eye chart, but it is a dark and light blur".

I've had both hands go numb. I could use them, mostly, but had to look at them to properly wash bread dough off of my hands. I couldn't feel it.

These things mostly got better after some time - I have MS, you see. It wouldn't be realistic to think that I could wake up and not be able to use my voice effectively or have some sort of hearing problem. Or not be able to walk well. Or a number of different things. And at least at first, I'd not think to use text relay either. I might not think about it for a few weeks - it might get better, after all. In the meantime, I'd be getting increasingly frustrated at society.

Wait until you find out 20% of the deaf are illiterate. Want to make the world more accessible, learn ASL and see to it the education and healthcare systems get real funding.

*Ironic typo mention below is fixed.

> Wait until you find out 20% of the deaf are illerate

Or that the average reading level of people that are deaf in the US in 4th grade.

The median US adult only reads at an 8th grade level, so that's actually not terribly surprising.

illerate, ey? /s

Learning ‘American’ sign language won’t make the ‘world’ more accessible. Most deaf people aren’t American.

Well the competitor is Chinese sign language and the Chinese government claims there are 4 million fluent signers of it. (Which would be the overwhelming majority of people who sign on the planet if it is true) so if you want to improve your raw odds of helping use that.

Yes, I failed to be inclusive of other sign languages. Learn the sign language that makes sense for your culture and environment, but learn a sign language!

I think the obvious solution here is to have sign language fluency be encouraged in whatever country you particularly live in. I think that person meant "world" as a figure of speech.

That's true for the entire language but, like a lot of other languages, there is significant overlap. For example, the American in American Sign Language means North American; it is the predominant manual language in Canada and the United States and has fairly wide acceptance in Mexico.

ASL is based on LSF, or French Sign Language, because of a long history (more or less involving the person with the last name Gallaudet) but the main point is that a lot of sign languages descend from LSF. Much like how someone who only knows English can go to Germany or France or Italy and make out some of the basic words, the overlap between LSF descendants is pretty good for basic or everyday use. I'm semi-fluent in ASL and I've successfully communicated with people who use Irish Sign Language and German Sign Language (DGS).

The big stand-out is British Sign Language, or BSL. BSL's manual alphabet and root signs are dramatically different from LSF. (Since a lot of ASL words are initialized motions, like taking the first letter of the English or French word and using that handshape sign in a motion, BSL doesn't translate as quickly.)

They didn’t pretend to be deaf. They pretended to have a speech disorder that prevented them from using their voice.

Correct, but such a person would normally still have/use text relay.

like a chat widget on a web page?

the companies could take the burden here. it isn’t that difficult.

This struck me as well. Not using the service whose entire reason for existence is "sometimes you need to use the phone and there are no equivalent options" seems like a self-own unless I am missing something.

At least in the United States there are various apps and sites you can use that are free that will provide relay services. I had to avail myself of this a few times when some respiratory bug made me impossible to understand speaking but I could still type.

The UK has this app: https://www.relayuk.bt.com/

Seems free and easy to use, for both deaf people and people who can't use their phone. Available though smartphones or dedicated devices.

I think it's completely fair to expect someone to use this service for the occasional phone call.

He was pretending to be dumb, not deaf, but yes seems that should still work and realistically what you'd do.

I can understand not taking pretending as far as using a wheelchair though, seems you could too easily end up in situations where you have to try to explain No no I'm on the side of people with disabilities, I'm not taking the piss, etc.

The ability to use these services is built in to modern phones.

iPhone, for example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207033

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