Deaf organizations solve accessibility gaps in White House briefings
The White House has not provided ASL interpreters for President Trump and his team’s press briefings on coronavirus. You may have noticed that in the past few days, DPAN.TV has provided a LIVE interpreted broadcast and CART captioning on Facebook.
[Three quick clips of DPAN.TV’s LIVE broadcast]
This was made possible by a collaboration between DPAN who provides the technology, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) and Convo who provides the interpreters, and Communication Service for the Deaf (CSD) who provides CART captioning. I asked them to share remarks on what motivated them to do this and on if the deaf community should have to find a solution or if the White House should provide this. Check out their comments.
[TRANSCRIPT]
BILL MILLIOS:
The idea all started with the RID Board who had decided to not wait for us to figure this out ourselves. The longer we wait, the more harm will be inflicted upon the deaf, DeafBlind and hard of hearing communities. RID decided that this was a problem that must be solved immediately. That got us started on working with our team and we came up with a beautiful solution.
SEAN FORBES:
I have two brothers, and my older brother works at Costco. So, these days a lot of people are swarming to Costco and buying food in bulk, and of course toilet paper! It’s been amazing for me watching my brother work. I text him every day so he can let me know what’s going on over there. My younger brother was recently promoted to Captain for the Detroit Fire Department, so both of my brothers could be considered being on the front line of this crisis. They’ve been keeping me in loop on what’s going on. I feel really honored to do my part too in making these White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefings accessible in ASL.
WAYNE BETTS, JR.:
With the current situation regarding the coronavirus outbreak, it can be overwhelming for you. There’s a lot of information for you to read whether it’s on social media or on the news, but of the information is in written text or in the form of written articles. It is not our natural language. Our first language is sign language so if you’re able to process information in a visual way, you’d be able to understand more and make better judgements for yourselves and for your health. So, I thought what DPAN.TV and RID did to work together is incredible. This collaboration will help a lot, so I just wanted to disclose my full support. We need to make sure that all of you have access to real time interpreters feeding you information in your native language so that you can make informed decisions.
ROSA LEE TIMM:
CSD has long been committed to making sure all critical public information that has an impact on our communities are accessible. The White House briefings have not been accessible. So we at CSD worked with others to offer CART services as a temporary solution.
MILLIOS:
I definitely feel that the White House should be providing their own access and solutions. First of all, it’s the law. The NAD has been fighting on our behalf and we must provide them support. The Deaf community, and the interpreting community, has taken up the responsibility to provide the access we need. This is certainly nice for us to behold and something to be commended indeed. However, is this really the responsibility for our communities to take on? To the White House, it is your responsibility and you should be providing what is required by the law.
BETTS, JR.:
Yes, I think it should be a standard principle, whether it's the White House or any communication to the general population in America and in any other countries. If you want to speak to the general population, you have to be considerate of different language and communication access needs. We simply have to take all this into consideration because this crisis will impact a large portion of our community. In the United States of America, we have 48 million deaf and hard of hearing people in our community. So, if any broadcasted information is vague, how many of us will be impacted by this? How many of us will be able to support each other so we can move forward? It could impact you, as an individual as well.
FORBES:
Should the White House bring in a live interpreter? I’d say ‘yes’ and there should be, but there’s another perspective to consider. If we produce it, we will always make sure that the assigned interpreter has the proper qualifications and we always make sure that you have captioning. Those are the things that, suppose that the White House had brought in a new Communications Director then they would have to relearn what we already know firsthand.
TIMM:
Providing equal communication access for major announcements like this —who is responsible? The White House, of course. It’s on the federal level and that’s why we have the ADA. Our goal is to collaborate, use our experts in captioning, hiring qualified interpreters, using our preferred platforms, and reaching a partnership with those who provide the funding. That’s our preferred solution.
THE DAILY MOTH:
Thank you four for your time and props to those four organizations for stepping up during this time of need. The NAD has advocated for the White House to provide ASL interpreters. But if nothing changes, we know that we can come up with solutions for our community.
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Supported by:
Convo [https://convo.click/2mVhM8h]
Gallaudet University: [gallaudet.edu]