Deaf Rights and Assistive Technology: From Gallaudet to the ADA

Language Acquisition and Early Deaf Experience

Born into the hearing world, a deaf child does not have the same opportunities as a non-deaf person. A child born deaf never heard the ocean, never heard music, and would always be a social outcast to the hearing world. The hearing child does not learn their native language in school. Language is not really something you learn. Acquisition of language is something that happens to you; it's not something you do. It is impossible to overstate the significance of hearing and sound to the process of acquiring an oral language like English. It is also impossible to overstate the enormity of the task that confronts the person who tries to learn English without hearing.

From the moment the hearing child first shows up in the world, they are surrounded by the sound of the human voice. A chorus made up of mother, father, grandmother, big brother, with a little Sesame Street thrown in, gives them a native language. When a child's hearing loss is prelingual—born deaf or hard-of-hearing, or the onset of hearing loss occurs before two to five years of age—deafness has a profound and lifelong effect on the ability to acquire and understand English or any other oral language. Frank Bowe, a deaf professor and writer, wrote, "Deafness...is, for me, much like living in a glass box. If any of you has watched a movie on a transcontinental flight without using the earphones, you will have a sense of what I mean" (Bowe 2). This communication barrier has been one of the central challenges facing the Deaf Community for generations.

Pathological Versus Cultural Models of Deafness

To understand how people perceive deafness, one must recognize that two different perspectives exist regarding deafness: the pathological model and the cultural model. The pathological model suggests that the behaviors and abilities of hearing people represented the norm and that deaf people digressed from this norm. According to the pathological model, deaf people were "idiots" who needed to be fixed. The model focused on the disability of the person and not on culture. This view "would seek to deny the very existence of the Deaf Community...This is the perspective that has been traditionally held by a majority of non-deaf professionals who interact with the Deaf Community" ("American Deaf Culture").

In contrast, the cultural model perceives the Deaf Community as a way of life, a culture that shares a form of communication providing the community with its own identity as well as a common language ("American Deaf Culture"). Before the 1970s, many people still perceived the Deaf as a diseased group needing treatment. This fundamental disagreement about whether deafness was a medical condition to be corrected or a cultural identity to be respected would shape policy, education, and social attitudes for decades to come. The shift from the pathological to the cultural model became one of the most significant intellectual and social transformations in Deaf history.

Pre-Gallaudet Treatment and Institutional Care

Before the Deaf President Now movement, people treated the Deaf Community as a group of outcasts. Deaf children were not tolerated by their own families. The child was "regarded with pity by the rest of the family... [and] carefully kept out of sight when visitors [were] in" ("The Asylum for Idiots"), and eventually shipped to an institution. Usually, the families of deaf children believed that "an idiot in the family is a hopeless case, on whom all education is thrown away, and all effort at improvement [is] a waste of time" ("The Asylum for Idiots").

This stereotype forced upon the Deaf Community arose from the intolerance and misunderstanding of the deaf's ability to communicate and perform equally with the hearing world. Most people believed that no hope existed for a deaf person. Frank Bowe wrote, "a forty-seven-year-old man was unable to hear, lip-read, speak, read, or write because he had never received the education he needed" (Bowe 5). Although many educators of the 1900s regarded education of the deaf a waste of taxpayers' money, a few institutions were established to support and educate deaf people. The first of these institutions, established in 1832, was the New-York Institution for the Deaf. Although the institution kept a pathological view on the topic of educating the deaf, it was a beginning to pursue equality for the Deaf Community in employment, education, and all rights that others take for granted.

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Section 504

One of the greatest movements for the Deaf Community was the passing of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and primarily Section 504. Section 504 focused on "providing education, health care, housing, social services, or parks and recreation" for disabled people. Not only did Section 504 help the disabled earn money, it granted them independence from caretakers. Still, the Deaf Community would not find equality for another fifteen years. Crossing this communication barrier came slowly, and years of contemptible treatment caused by ignorance of Deaf culture led to an uprising that would finally catalyze national change.

The Deaf President Now Movement at Gallaudet University

Over a decade after the Rehabilitation Act, deaf students at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., voiced their rights in a movement named Deaf President Now. The university teaches deaf students to overcome social bindings and become leaders. On March 5, 1988, a protest broke out at the school after the Gallaudet University Board hired Elizabeth Zinser, a hearing woman, despite bilateral requests from students and faculty for a deaf president. The university populace felt betrayed by the school's teachings of leadership potential.

On March 6, students and faculty participated in a protest march in front of the Mayflower Hotel, the location of the board's meeting discussing the three finalists for the position of president. Jane Spilman, the board chair, met with three of the student representatives and hastily commented, "Deaf people are incapable of functioning in the real world" (Shein 139). This statement galvanized the movement. Gary Olsen, the Executive Director of the National Association for the Deaf, backed the students and staff by stating, "The school educates the deaf to lead, then won't give deaf people a chance to lead" (Ayres 1). If Gallaudet University failed to model Deaf equality by refusing to hire a deaf president, how would the nation respond to deaf leadership?

The protestors compiled four demands: "(1) replace Zinser with a Deaf president; (2) replace the board's chair; (3) increase Deaf representation on the board to a majority [of 51%]; (4) assure no reprisals against the protestors" (Shein 139). Jerry Covell, a senior of twenty-three years, voiced through an interpreter, "We will stay out of the classroom forever if we have to" (Ayres 1). On the morning of March 10, 1988, the president of Gallaudet University resigned. On March 13, 1988, Spilman was replaced by Phil Bravin, a deaf leader, as the chair of the Board of Trustees. In addition, the board promised to keep a fifty-one percent majority of deaf people on the Board. All students walked away with no reproaches. With all demands nearly met, the students of Gallaudet celebrated the first major victory for the Deaf Community.

The impact of Deaf President Now struck the hearing population with surprise. Most of the hearing community believed that deaf people could not achieve everything a hearing person could achieve. Despite this thinking, the Deaf Community's protest met great success. A number of reasons explain why the revolt met with so much success. First, the entire Deaf Community of the area, over 1,000 people, participated in the movement. They used methods successfully implemented in previous civil rights movements such as boycotts and marches. In addition, the protestors held the idea that their movement was a civil rights movement and not simply a Deaf rights movement. More people sympathized with the cause since more people identified with it.

Legislative Impact: The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Aside from the immediate effects of the protest, one of the most important legal contributions to the Deaf Community passed through Congress in 1990. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) modified the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The ADA created a better definition for disability by removing homosexuality, bisexuality, and other conditions from its definition, thus focusing the entire document on disabled persons. The ADA also contains a list of services and aids for people with hearing impairment: "qualified interpreters, note takers, transcription services, written materials, telephone handset amplifiers, assertive listening devices, assertive listening systems, telephones compatible with hearing aids, closed caption decoders, open and closed captioning, telecommunications for deaf persons (TDD's) [and] video text displays" (Holmes 57).

After passing the act, nearly every school in the country was ordered to make accommodations to comply with the law. Some schools needed to change as few things as fire alarms, while others required full-time interpreters for deaf students. Every school with government funding, whether state or federal money, had to comply with the terms of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the ADA (Holmes 60). The preservation of the Deaf culture has always been a major aspect of deaf Americans' lives. The protest of students at Gallaudet University sparked the creation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA. Both acts have been invaluable toward helping the community gain entitled equality and rights. The two acts together have brought astounding advancement in the treatment and technology pertaining to the Deaf Community. With the passing of the ADA, the balance between opportunity in the hearing world and the Deaf Community has nearly leveled. Through advances in communication, the gap between the hearing world and the deaf world has been bridged. By means of understanding, both the hearing world and the Deaf Community began to view each other as equals.