Inaccessibility of campaigns locks out deaf

WHEN deaf Americans discuss the 2024 White House candidates, some of them use a sign representing the president’s classic aviator sunglasses to refer to Joe Biden, or make a gesture mimicking Donald Trump’s signature comb-over hairstyle.

But experts say many of the approximately million deaf and hardof-hearing American Sign Language (ASL) users in the US may not be participating in politics at all, due to the inaccessibility of campaigns.

In a country where the last two presidential races were decided by only tens of thousands of votes, the group represents a potentially significant but untapped voting bloc.

“The most important thing is for deaf people to feel like members, not visitors, in (this) country,” said Brendan Stern, a political science professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf students.

Presidential campaigns that receive federal funding are legally required to caption their ads, but captions can be glitchy or inaccurate, and most candidates don’t hire interpreters for live events.

And captions do not always provide sufficient access. ASL is its own language separate from English, with its own grammar, word order and idioms.

When deciding who to support, deaf voters may be interested in candidates’ stances on issues related to their disability, such as funding for specialist schools, but they are focused on the same issues other Americans care about too.

According to political science professor Stern, there is almost no official research on the partisan leanings of the US deaf population.

It’s not even clear at what rate deaf Americans vote, he said, citing research showing that disabled people overall tend to engage less with the political system than the general population.

But “studies have been inconclusive, at best, in measuring the voting turnout and behavior of deaf people,” he added.

To foster more political engagement on the Gallaudet campus, Stern – the only deaf political science PHD in the country – coaches a student debate team and runs programmes aimed at registering deaf Americans to vote.

Gallaudet student Zanibelle Hoglind, 20, said she has voted in elections in her home state of Colorado, but doesn’t follow politics closely.

“Maybe I would like to be involved in politics more, for sure,” she said. “But I just think there’s just not a lot of accessibility.”

“There needs to be a good, clear, certified interpreter,” Hoglind added.

Although offering captions alone is considered legally satisfactory, the Biden administration is the first to employ full-time ASL interpreters.