The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Masks act as communication barrier for some deaf students
When high school senior Andrew Parent went to the store to get a PlayStation 4 controller over a month ago, he felt a small spike of apprehension.
He went up to someone who worked there and tried to let them know that he wanted to buy one. He gestured and gestured, before he eventually ended up motioning that the employee should follow him to unlock a cabinet for electronics, which worked.
Before the pandemic, though, he said he wouldn’t have felt “anxious at all” in that situation. Parent, who identifies as deaf, could’ve read their lips — a means now complicated by the addition of protective masks.
“It was really nerve wracking at first to try to figure out how I was going to deal with that situation,” he said, as conveyed by a translator. “But then once we got going, it got better.”
For members of the deaf and hard of hearing community, amplified communication barriers have added another challenge in the face of all of the uncertainties or changes that already come from living during a pandemic. Some students say those issues have also carried over to a school setting at times, as they try to pick up the emotions of their friends or understand a teacher communicating quickly while wearing masks.
Parent attends the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, which serves about 150 students on campus and “between 450 to 500 deaf and hard of hearing students” total across its different programs, according to the school’s executive director, Jeff Bravin. The school, established in the early 1800s, marked the country’s “first permanent school for the deaf,” according to its website.
To start off, Parent said it was “really difficult” to adapt to wearing masks all the time in school, since it was hard to pick up facial
cues and ascertain people’s moods.
“But after a while, we got used to it, and everything’s okay,” said Parent, who is from Canton. “But I am hoping that eventually we won’t have to continue wearing masks.”
But Juan Castro Jr., another senior at the school, said he hasn’t quite gotten used to wearing a mask yet. When he runs through his mental checklist as he leaves his dorm on the school’s campus, sometimes he has to turn back for it.
Castro, who identifies as hard of hearing, said sometimes it can be “really, really difficult” to adjust, since he “heavily” relies on reading people’s lips.
“And so now I’ve really got to focus on people signing. And some deaf people are fast when they sign,” said Castro, who is from East Hartford. “There are times that I miss things and I have to ask people to repeat things that they’re signing, or I ask them to slow their signs down so that I can have that full communication.”
That’s come up sometimes when he’s communicating with a teacher, he said, but normally he’s able to catch the entirety of what they’re saying if they repeat themselves a second time. His teachers wear different kinds of masks, he said — most of them wear cloth ones, one of
them wears two masks — but one wears an N95 mask that can make understanding them more challenging.
“Deaf people really rely heavily on facial expressions to determine the meaning of what somebody is trying to communicate,” Castro said, “and all I can see is somebody’s eyes.”
To assist with that issue, Bravin wrote in an email that the school initially purchased about 2,000 clear masks for students and staff at the school to use if they choose to, to be supplemented with further orders later on.
The cost of the masks was “very expensive,” though, Bravin said, so they ordered a batch supply in coordination with public schools that members of the deaf and hard of hearing community attend in New England and schools for students who are deaf around the U.S. to cut down some of the price.
It was about $56,000 for over 20,000 masks across all the schools that ordered — or about $2.70 per mask, as compared to about 25 cents for a surgical mask, according to Bravin.
“The fiscal impact has been tremendous on our schools around all of this … but we are very grateful to many of our board members, our donors and our sponsors who continue to invest in the school and support the things that we need to be able to move forward,” Bravin said.
Clear masks are a “nice option” for students, since the individual can see people’s faces and it doesn’t cause as much of an “audio issue” as cloth masks, said Sheri Romblad, a parent of a child who goes to the American School For the Deaf.
“I wish that when, you know, the CDC set out standards that they thought of accommodations and gave, you know, medical people options to go to choose different types of masks,” said Romblad, a Madison resident. “In certain situations, you have to be able to accommodate somebody, and that doesn’t always happen.”
Her son has been taking most of his classes in person at the American School for the Deaf, and one class virtually and in-person through their local school district, Romblad said. Virtual learning at the beginning of the pandemic was a “hard start” amid technology issues, she said, but this school year “it seems to be working much better.”
Even so, efforts to accommodate students don’t work the same across the board. For his virtual class, the school in the district is looking into getting technology that could take notes on the instruction for him to review, Romblad said, but something like closed captioning wouldn’t work as well for her son.
“Closed captioning, it’s wonderful, but it’s not wonderful for my son,” she said. “Because not only can he not hear well, he’s also severely dyslexic. And a lot of people feel that they’re accommodating this community, and they’re not, that’s not always a quick fix.”
Romblad noted inclusivity issues that arise in other areas, such as when TV news stories attempt to accommodate just by using closed captioning.
“They’re denied access,” she said, “and it’s wrong.”