Love, crossing ALL the barriers here, translated…
If, the hearing impaired were the ones, crushed, underneath all that monstrous, humongous, helpless, sense of fears………
On the New Year’s Eve dinner, there’s something extra on in Taiwan. Starting on February 6th, the television started reporting the news of how the Wei-Guan Building had collapsed in the huge earthquake in Tainan, the search and rescue team members used an assortment of devices, to detect signs of life in the debris. At the same time, the dying cries of the survivors, started, hitting the walls, attempted to, stay alive, and, the newspaper that were, caught in the broken down walls, got risen up by the wind, seemed to be, waving goodbye to someone, making the stressed out individuals, mistaking it, as signals for help.
not my pictures…
Those of us who weren’t trapped under the debris, but can empathize, our moods started going up and down, with the results from the search and rescues, feeling the sadness, the sorrows, or, overjoyed. And, it’d reminded me, that what if, the ones who were trapped were, those who are hearing impaired, underneath the crumbled sense of fear? In the darkness, they couldn’t feel the happenings on around them, if they are lucky enough to have their cell phones, they can still send out the signals to call for help, and if they’re not too far from the sites of the digs, if they still had energies left, they can start screaming, or, bang hard on the materials close to their bodies, to call for help………but, what if, there are, no if’s? And, at the first time to being rescued out, are there, translators on site, to help communicate the health of the injured? Does anybody even know, that there’s this group of people that lived here?
Who Will Tell Them?
In 2014, the E. boli virus that still wore its mysterious veil had, caused wide panic, back then, the mayor of New York had a press conference, explaining the procedures of treatment, as well as the measures the government had taken, to prevent the spread of the virus. And to show the seriousness, there were, two signers translating the words from the mayor of New York—one was a hearing translator, translating the words of the mayor, to the deaf translators who were on camera with the mayor (dubbed as “Mr. Signs” by the Taiwanese media), and, through his translations, allowing all the deaf population in the U.S., to understand more about this deadly virus. The two signers’ motives were, hoping to use their original “language”, through the signs for the deaf community (the exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, the natural sign language signs, and the sentence combinations), to help pass along this news information firsthand. And still, the media focus of Taiwan’s reporters were “the man in charge of signing may be too expressive, he’d opened up his eyes very wide, to show his fears, then, frowned, to show his worries, and the audience can’t help but laugh, and stopped focusing on what is being said!”, they’d completely missed the fact, that when there’s serious accidents or natural disasters in Taiwan, the news stations almost NEVER hired a signer, or even, with the words printed on screen, to allow the audience who can hear, to get the news, to understand, what, exactly, was happening in the world all around them. (Thankfully, the Weather Services starting last year during the typhoon seasons had, hired a signer, to broadcast the movements of the typhoons).
I’d translated as a signer too, with the environmental evaluation committee (yes, there are hearing impaired members of the environmental evaluation committee), to make the rounds, to check out if the equipment to aid the handicapped was up to standard. And that, was when they’d discovered, that different handicaps are requiring different kinds of needs, how to devise something that fitted to every member of the handicap population, and watch out for aesthetics, so creative designs no longer worked parallel from the safety requirements, this, is what the society still needs to work on. And, in the needs of the hearing impaired population, the visual flow as the guides, and the reminders of a disaster is occurring, seemed to be overlooked often, they’d only, at most, put a flashing light to remind the workers of a fire. And, it seemed, that most people, because the members of the deaf population looked “normal”, and so, they were misled, that they could move freely on their own, that they could, make the “observations” themselves? But, what, is happening, where, are they all supposed to head to for cover, who will “tell” them these important matters?
The Equality & Respect from the Passing of the Information
Recently, on cable television, “Hear-Say” was reshown again, it’s a film on hearing and deaf families, a film about sign language, and a beautiful misunderstanding. Back then, there’s no smart phones, naturally, NO LINE to communicate instantly either, and so, the male and female leads can only text one another to show care and concern for each other.
The members of the viewing community who were paying close attention will note, how there would be assisting items in the households of the deaf, for instance, a fax machine, a flashlight that connected to the doorbell (when the doorbell rings, the light start flashing too), etc., etc., etc. And the key turning point in the story was when the female protagonist’s older sister, “Peng” (deaf) was alone, asleep at home, and, there was a fire upstairs, but the child couldn’t hear the screams, the hollers, or the sirens from the neighbors and the fire trucks outside, plus the smoke was suffocating, the child couldn’t manage to scream (or rather, is not used to screaming)………back then, as I watched, I’d become, agitated too, thinking what is to happen, I guess, the neighbors knew that there’s a family with a special needs child, and told the fire department, and the fire department broke into the household, and saved Peng. But, what if, nobody knew about the member of this family being deaf, could it have, easily, turned into a tragedy too? How, would the director keep on, rolling with the storyline then?
from the papers…
The Japanese Handicapped League after a huge earthquake, found, that those who are handicapped has twice the chances of not making out of a natural disaster. And because of it, they’d hoped, that the government, the media can, think about how to make the public spaces more handicap friendly, that there’s not just the need for the hardware, the installment of gadgets, but also ways to transfer the information, the equality, as well as the respects. In other terms, educating the people who are handicapped, to be prepared for these situations, teaching them how to avoid getting injured, to protect themselves, and designing the guides for an escape route for when disasters do happen. Can the environment really become “Handicapable”, is the key point and the starting point, and this, is something that you and I can easily help out with too.
And so, this, is a sort of an S.O.S. (maybe not that serious!!!) for the world to start developing the needed gadgets, the awareness of the needs of these machineries, to help the handicapped population to have a better chance at surviving the natural disasters such as typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, as well as fires too. And there’s, a LOT of room for improvements on this still…but, slowly, we’re, marching in the right directions………
Life, the Obstacle Course 