All too familiar
One example of accessibility battles having to be repeated: advocate
Hearing impaired students still fighting against listening component of exams
When Gander lawyer Erika Breen Hearn saw a story from the CBC’S Jeremy Eaton in May featuring high school senior Jordan Hollahan, it sounded all too familiar.
Hollahan was objecting to the listening component of the province’s English 3201 public exam, worth 10 per cent of the final exam grade. He said the accommodations being offered students with a hearing impairment — including having someone read passages to the students in a private room — would not put them on a level playing field.
Breen Hearn had actually spoken out against the same exam requirement while she was in high school, in her final year at Gonzaga High in St. John’s in 2005. For her exam, she was read to in a private room, before answering the required questions.
While she used hearing aids and was able to lip-read, she said having to watch the reader’s face meant she could miss things if she looked down to make notes. She also points out that lip-reading can be impossible in some cases due to anything from poor visibility of the other person’s face, lighting or thick accents altering mouth movements.
The CNIB estimates even expert lip-readers pick up only about 20 per cent from lip-reading alone at full focus.
While students are also offered sign language, some students with hearing impairments don’t know the language, are not part of the deaf community or are not familiar with deaf culture.
When Breen Hearn fought the exam requirement, she thought she had won.
“After the fact, it was removed, because it is discriminatory. So yay! You know? We won the fight. Let’s put it to bed. Let’s move on to other challenges,” she said. “Apparently not.”
The requirement has been returned to the exam, with no ability for hearing-impaired students to opt out. That led her to write a letter to the editor, published in The Telegram in 2016, to raise the issue again.
After seeing Hollahan’s story, she wrote to Education Minister Dale Kirby, to again ask for change.
“Shouldn’t we be able to move on as a society and not have this same fight over and over again? It’s really disheartening. It really is,” she said.
The Department of Education is responsible for public exams and told The Telegram the exam segment is to evaluate response to non-written text, as the students would be at points during the year.
“The department’s position is supported by Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority, the leading authority of support services for deaf and hardof-hearing students in Atlantic Canada,” stated an emailed response to questions.
It noted deaf and hard-ofhearing teachers, and student support specialists, were involved in the development of the standards.
Tired of repeat battles
At the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association in Newfoundland and Labrador, executive director Leon Mills was onside with Breen Hearn when she was a student, speaking on the issue on Rogers’ “Out of the Fog.”
Mills said he has asked why the exam element was brought back.
“I’ve never heard a straight answer. They just feel, well, it’s part of the curriculum, being able to listen, so they’re testing your ability to listen,” he said.
He said having to repeat battles has, sadly, been a part of life in Newfoundland and Labrador, and something he attributes to a lack of education and a need for a greater shift in attitudes.
At his office, he walked over to the light switch on the wall, flicking off the lights.
“I went from completely hearing to completely deaf in that instant,” he said.
He was in his late 20s at the time, and in his fourth year of university.
In his case, the hearing loss was tied to a viral attack on his autonomic nervous system. He recovered some hearing, graduated and began work as a teacher. Later, he moved into advocacy work with the association.
He has helped the organization grow from an entirely volunteer group with restricted services to one with 11 staff, a $1-million annual operating budget and library of assistive devices.
But he’s hit some lows, and considered giving it up in recent years, based on having to fight the same battles time and time again.
“For the person who lives with a disability, it often demeans you as a person. You feel inadequate, incomplete. There’s something wrong with you. You’re a burden. It affects your self-esteem and how you view the world,” he said.
But is inclusion overall pushing that? Or is it working as a school policy?
“For the most part they’ve been doing a good job as far as we can see,” he said.