In a survey conducted by our group, 57% of the responses said that they had felt uncomfortable in an hearing dominant environment. The main reason is that there is a lack of understanding on both deaf/hard of hearing and hearing perspectives. The stigma against people who are deaf and hard of hearing has an impact on how they interact with the hearing world.
We received about 35 responses in our deaf and hard of hearing population. The majority of those people wears an assistive device while several others do not. Anecdotes that were shared by respondents speak to an overall sense of frustration with the assumptions made by the hearing population. The intuitive thing for hearing people to do when someone replies “what?”, is to speak louder. Someone that cannot hear anything at all, having someone speak in a higher volume doesn’t really change on clarity.
Dr. Mark Orlando, an audiologist explained to us that, the assistive devices that deaf and hard of hearing people have an inherited distortion. He also had stated that there are also different levels of deafness as well as high or low frequency deafness. Already there are three factors to take into place here, so not everyone’s audible ability is the same.
Fig 1: Survey results that were derived from conducting a google form survey and asking through our personal social media of both hearing, and the deaf and hard of hearing.
Fig 2: Common responses received on both surveys—one of which was for the deaf and hard of hearing, and the other for the hearing population—in the interactions with the deaf and hard of hearing.
Most people outside the community aren't aware that people on the spectrum use assistive devices with different levels of efficacy, while others choose not to wear them at all. Another thing is that many people assume that someone who is deaf or hard of hearing can read lips, or sign well and that isn’t always the case. Due to this lack of understanding, many assume that working and communicating with the deaf and hard of hearing community is an inherently difficult task that may not be worth the effort. To help people gain awareness for those who are deaf and hard of hearing, we plan to produce an immersive virtual reality experience for hearing users to learn that there are different types of hearing loss, as well as effective strategies of communicating with the deaf and hard of hearing community.
According to our survey, there are many deaf and hard of hearing individuals that have shared similar stories about interacting with the hearing world. Many described incidents where a hearing person, upon learning that the person they were talking to was deaf or hard of hearing, would apologize and then dismiss the conversation that they had started. In other cases the hearing person would not do anything during the interaction and just walk away.
It needs to be understood that these encounters can affect the interaction and communication transmission between the hearing and deaf or hard of hearing. Humans need socialization with other humans and if we build that bridge of understanding there will be more diversity as well7. For our immersive experience, we use the primary data from our survey of the general deaf and hard of hearing population, and the hearing population at University of Rochester to craft storylines that capture common scenarios.
Our project, clEAR: gaining perspective on the deaf and hard of hearing, will be an interactive VR experience where the user chooses their actions when interacting with someone on the spectrum of deaf and hard of hearing. The other part of our experience will place our users in the headspace of someone on the spectrum to gain an understanding of what it is like to experience different forms of deaf and hard of hearing. The goal is to have our users build an understanding of proper ways to interact with people on that spectrum. There are many factors to take in while interacting with a person who is deaf or hard of hearing. If those factors become more well known, hearing people will develop a better understanding about interacting with people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
References
1. "Communication Info." Deaf-Hearing Communication Centre, Inc. Accessed 2018. https://dhcc.org/dhcc-outreach/communication-info/.
2. "Debunked: Top 8 Myths about Deafness You Need to Know." Deaf Unity RSS. Accessed 2018. https://deafunity.org/article-interview/debunked-myths-about-deafness/.
3. "Tips for Communicating with the Deaf/Hard of Hearing | HSDC." Hearing, Speech & Deaf Center. Accessed 2018. https://www.hsdc.org/services/deaf-101/.
4. “DMS clEAR VR CAPSTONE Survey #1.” Google Forms. Accessed 2019. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16SoLTWtLLe3P-ecGYjn5eFEtumGAMYpZjyo5Y4ao3Gs/edit
5. “DMS clEAR VR CAPSTONE Survey #2.” Google Forms. Accessed 2019. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10QkIC7XKGzS-t1QvyxFGiUmFuX5bw372wFT9olXXTsU/edit