Elizabeth Seal calls for better communication access during meeting on Capitol Hill
ABC 8 News in Maine reported that several family members of the 18 victims of the Lewiston shooting went to Capitol Hill last Thursday to meet with Maine’s congressional delegation.
Among them was Elizabeth Seal, a Deaf woman who tragically lost her Deaf husband, Josh Seal. Three other Deaf men were killed and five deaf men were injured.
ABC 8 News shared a clip of Seal’s testimony and I am sharing it here.
[Video clip] Credit: WMTW ABC 8 News
Elizabeth Seal: I’m spreading awareness about communication issues for the Deaf community. Ever since the first hour and afterward, we’ve had multiple communication barriers. The Deaf community, including the victims’ families and survivors, were in the dark and didn’t know what was going on. The first emergency alert had a statement that they were looking for the shooter. An active shooter in Lewiston. But what else? I was looking for my husband. I called hospitals and tried going to hospitals. There were no interpreters. No communication. The survivors on the premises — when emergency crews arrived and realized they were deaf, didn’t know how to communicate with them. For those transported to hospitals, to the armory (for survivors), there were still communication problems. Hospitals refused to provide in-person interpreters. They used VRI devices instead. The internet connection was spotty and often froze up. But first of all, the VRI interpreters were not there in person, which meant they lacked context of what was going on. We had to explain it, what “this” is. The spotty internet was very frustrating for those who survived and were injured in hospitals. They couldn’t get immediate medical access. For those in the armory, they had to wait several hours before interpreters finally showed up to exchange information. Deaf people were left in the dark and had to text each other for communication and piece together information. I was looking for my husband. At 5:30 in the morning, I went to the reunification center for more information. At that point, which was several hours after the shooting, there were still no interpreters provided. So I had to rely on my mother-in-law, who was grieving. Her son was gone. She had to use her limited signing skills to share information. It was very emotional and traumatizing for both of us. It should have not happened to anyone. In the meanwhile, the Deaf community, when they watched the news to get updates, the “breaking news” reports sometimes had no captions. If there were captions, it was delayed or sometimes blocked. And there are many Deaf people who may not read English and they prefer to see sign language, their first language for full information, the interpreters would be cut off sometimes from the frame. So they couldn’t see what was being said or the information was cut off. We had to emphasize to others to please include the interpreter with the speaker. We are thankful for Gov. Mills who called on media organizations to include interpreters for Deaf people. So I’m spreading that information and making sure it continues to this day. Without this information, I can’t start our healing journey, not until we have all the information. So I’m here today and I support the independent investigation. I’m thankful for that. But it is just talk and I want to see action. I want to see it being followed through.
[End video clip]
You can see that Seal said there were multiple major communication issues. One is that there were no in-person interpreters for Deaf family members or Deaf survivors at hospitals or at the armory. Seal also said she was never provided with interpreters at a reunification center where she tried to find where her husband was and had to rely on her mother-in-law for communication access, which was traumatizing because both were grieving. Seal also pointed out that news coverage of the tragedy often cut out ASL interpreters.
I received similar comments about multiple issues with interpreters at hospitals and press conferences during a recent interview with Regan Thibodeau and Keri Brooks.
So this is clearly a serious concern for Deaf communities across the U.S. — are our local government officials prepared to meet Deaf people’s communication needs during emergencies?
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News reports explained that the families of the victims have asked members of Congress to push the U.S. military to conduct an independent investigation into how the shooting suspect, Robert Card, was able to have access to firearms despite reports of serious mental health problems that required him to be hospitalized as recently as last summer. Card was an Army reservist.
The group is calling on the U.S. Army inspector general to provide a full accounting. The Washington Post said in Maine, an independent commission is investigating all aspects of the shootings and it is seeking subpoena power to question the Army.