The Deaf Community and Adopting Innovation

Deaf people are, in many ways, on the cutting edge of technology and communication.  I suppose it all begins with the printing press.

Back in the 1800s when schools for Deaf children were being established and staffed, one widespread trade that was taught was printing and the creation of newspapers.  Nearly every school for the Deaf had its own newspapers and there was an unofficial exchange of newspapers between the schools and the Deaf community which referred to the school newspapers collectively as the "Little Papers" (Baynton, et. al. p 49).  This was where the news of the community was shared and shipped to far away places where friends and graduates kept up with the goings on of fellow alumni, leaders, movers and shakers in the Deaf community.  While the larger newspaper chains would eventually create the Associated Press or the United Press International, the Little Papers were often cited and quoted as news sources in other Deaf newspapers.

All of this is rather unusual because the cultural newspapers of the Deaf community does not use the native language of the community.  In Czech communities, the newspapers would be printed in Czech.  Russian communities would have Russian language in their newspapers.  But Deaf people in the United States used English instead of ASL (American Sign Language).  This is because American Sign Language does not have a standard written form.  Of all the bilingual communities in the world, the Deaf community is perpetually bilingual because signed languages serve face-to-face interaction very efficiently but cannot be effectively converted to print-based media.

English again would be the language for the next several innovations:  In the late 1960s Robert Weitbrecht, a Deaf engineer, invented the Teletype Yoke or TTY.  It allowed old Western Union telegraph machines to communicate with each other over standard phone lines.  This innovation allowed Deaf people to make use of telephone lines to communicate with each other, but the communication was English text.  It required a teletype device connected via the TTY to the phone line then on the other end the phone connected to another TTY and another teletype device.  The old teletypes had been decommissioned by Western Union but they ignored requests to donate the machines to Deaf organizations.  The deaf community innovated this outdated technology by seeing the potential value of someone else's old and outdated technology (Scheetz p 308; Baynton, et. al. p 121).

Fax machines were of great use to the Deaf community and there were many people who purchased the device to send hand-written messages to friends, family or work.  Again, however, the language of this communication was English text, not the more comfortable and efficient American Sign Language.

Emails evolved in the late 1980s and with the eventual combination of video attachments. Emails served as a way to broadcast news within the Deaf community as the phenomenon of "ListServes" grew, where a simple reply to the List meant everyone got a copy of your email.  At first it was cool, but eventually it became a problem when people's email boxes began filling up (Remember when that was possible?).

In 1990 the first George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Title IV of the act outlined the requirement for every state to establish a round-the-clock, 24-7 relay service.  The TTY had evolved into a mini-typewriter-sized device that you plugged into the phone line.  Many state programs provided these devices for Deaf people at no charge or reduced prices.  The relay services expanded the value of the TTY from the origin of Deaf people calling each other (because both parties had TTYs).  Through relay services, Deaf people could call anyone through the relay and the operator would read the text to the hearing party and type the hearing party's words to the Deaf party.  But it didn't feel like much of a party to either party because typing out text that someone says takes a lot of time... and reading the text that even a fast typist produces is still no exciting event.  Many hearing consumers would hear the opening statement from the operator and think it was either a scam, prank call, or telemarketer calling (Holcomb, p 260).

Later in the 1990s we saw the development of Text messaging. At first it was a separate service that required people to use pagers (remember pagers?) and instead off merely buzzing when you were paged, you could receive seven or ten digits of information - a call-back number.  People innovated how to communicate with these numbers, for example, 911 meant "call the office immediately." Soon additional lines of text became available and at least one company marketed specifically to the Deaf community.  Deaf people didn't need a landline and a huge refrigerator-sized teletype machine to talk to each other... now they could just send texts back and forth - on their pagers.  And eventually on our cell phones (Holcomb, p 260).

In the early 2000s Sorenson came out with the videophone, designed to be distributed to Deaf people through government funded relay services.  This expanded the options for meeting the Title IV requirements of the ADA.  The Deaf community was quick to adopt this innovation - instead of using a text-based mini-typewriter now Deaf people would place a call to the relay center using the videophone.  The relay centers now needed bilingual interpreters to place the call to the hearing party and interpret both sides of the conversation between English and ASL.  No more typing.  No more waiting.  Information flowed as freely as a conversation in either language.  Within ten years the expansion of the use of videophones would almost completely replace the previous thirty-five year history and reliance on TTYs.  

The last major innovation of technology used by Deaf people came when the iPhone hit the market.  FaceTime became the instant replacement for all things text-based.  You could call your friends and use ASL, no English typing needed.  You could be in your car and access relay services rather than sitting in front of the videophone installed in your living room or office.  Through relay, you could call 911 and be assured that the operator would not hang up on you because "All I heard was random tones and beeping sounds. There was no one there."

It has been a long path of navigating innovations in technology but the Deaf community has been right there at the forefront - either accepting the technology directly as it was intended or adapting it for their own particular needs.

References

Baynton, D. C., Gannon, J. R., & Bergey, J. L. (2007). Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community. Gallaudet University Press.

Holcomb, T. K. (2013). Introduction to American Deaf Culture. Oxford University Press.

Padden, C., & Humphries, T. L. (2003). Deaf in America: Voices from a culture. Harvard University Press.

Scheetz, N. A. (2001). Orientation to Deafness. Allyn and Bacon.

Vickrey, V. C. J. (2002). Deaf History Unveiled: Interpretations from the New Scholarship. Gallaudet University Press.