Tag Archives: deaf academics

Profile: Dr. Hilde Haualand

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A smiling white woman with blue eyes and graying hair cut in a curly bob. She wears a light blue shirt, and delicate gold chains around her neck.
  • Current title: Professor
  • Location: Oslo, Norway
  • Field of expertise: Sign language, deaf studies, sign language interpreting
  • Years of experience in academia: Contract researcher since 2001, PhD completed 2012.
  • Twitter: @hildemh

Background?

I am a deaf multilingual in several signed and written languages (and selectively and contextually, sometimes also spoken languages), who grew up in a hearing family. My parents made sure I met deaf role models early on. I obtained my elementary education at the local school, but played with friends and participated in leisure activities at the nearby deaf school. Continuously switching between deaf and hearing people instilled in me a lifelong habit of observing and comparing people, their language habits, and their social behavior in different contexts. After completing my MA in social anthropology in 2001, I started to work at a contract research institute (Fafo Research Foundation), and eventually also obtained my PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo in 2012. After a post doctorate at NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology 2015-2017, I started to work as an associate professor at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, where I was recently promoted to (full) professor. 

How did you get to where you are?

Feeling like a half insider, half outsider among both deaf and hearing people for years, I was attracted early on to the thinking and theoretical approaches of social anthropology. Being raised in a family of academics, it was never a question if I should enter higher education, only which field – and I was lucky to find my direction early. After working as a contract researcher for a few years, my research group got a grant from the Norwegian Research Council, which included a PhD scholarship for me. Since I had maneuvered academia with and without interpreters for years, I did not really have any big concerns regarding accessibility, but could feel the impostor syndrome hitting every now and then. However, it was more difficult than I had anticipated to find qualified interpreters who could handle advanced academic discourse in English at a PhD level. When I finally got an agreement with the interpreting service providers that I would be able to work with a team of three interpreters throughout my PhD, things worked out better. Also, a growing international network of deaf academics has been an invaluable asset, as they inspire me, and make my job so much more fun than it would be if I only had to work with hearing academics. Last, but not least – I have a great group of colleagues at OsloMet. At the section for sign language and interpreting, Norwegian sign language is our working language, regardless of hearing status; this has been very important for my work environment, providing a collegiate spirit and a necessary feeling of belonging. 

What is the biggest professional challenge you have or have had? How do you mitigate this challenge?

Currently my biggest challenge is the idea that academia and research can be organized according to New Public Management principles, and all the “efficiency improvement” measures that really only put more administrative burden on faculty. I did not obtain a PhD to spend a full working day trying to make sure we get the rooms we need for teaching. Covid times have however put us all in the same boat, so it’s currently mostly about making sure the students get what they are entitled to, and make the best out of it. 

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

Our department has an in-house interpreter who is paid by the university. She does much of the ad hoc interpreting in the hallways, at shorter meetings, and on Zoom, and organizes all other planned and longer interpreting requests that continuously pour in when there are both signers and non-signers at the department and at the university. Had the university instead relied on outside interpreters, the labor of requesting and organizing all the interpreting assignments would fall on us [faculty]. Without our in-house interpreter, we would probably be able to devote less time to our professional work, and would spend more time organizing interpreters. 

What is your typical day like?

In these home office days, I start the day with a walk (following son to school) before a hour long virtual “Shut up and write” session with 4-5 colleagues at 9:00. Then there’s planning, planning, administration, teaching preparations, administration, e-mails and meetings for the rest of the day, and I often stop by 5 – 5.30. Then there’s almost always some reading (review, supervision, assessment etc.) to do, which I sometimes do at night, or during one of my favorite times: early Saturday and Sunday mornings, before the family wakes up, with a cup of coffee and a small piece of dark chocolate! But I’ve learned I also need daily breaks, so I often end the day with a TV show and some knitting before bed time.

What advice would you give your former self?

Work with people you like. There’s always brighter times coming when the days are dull. Impostor syndrome is probably one of the most common syndromes among researchers. Believe that you have a unique and valid position and vision, and can make a contribution. 

Any funny stories you want to share?

At a dinner for PhD advisors, one of my seatmates started to ask the usual questions about sign language (Is it universal? Why not?), interpreters (Do they work full time? Do you know them?) and deaf people (How deaf are you? Are there any other deaf researchers?), but eventually, I got one unexpected question; “How often do you have to answer these questions, and how much time to you spend answering them?” I made a quick estimate and said with a smile it could last about the time of one course at a conference dinner. A little bit later, I started a conversation with someone at the other side of the table, who soon (and as expected) started to ask the same kind of questions. I swallowed a small sigh, and before I politely prepared myself for another round with the same topic, the first seatmate burst out “Give her a break! Hilde just answered all those questions, and now I hear how stupid they are.” For the rest of the evening, we all talked about anything but sign language, interpreters and deaf people, which does not happen too often (unfortunately).  

Eloquence is Overrated…and Exhausting

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white woman with dark shoulder length hair

–Hi there. I’m Sara, and I’m almost deaf. 

As folks with hearing loss, we have been trained to speak clearly so that we mask our deafness and can be accepted to be as capable as the hearing. While people associate academic brilliance and intelligence with eloquent elocution, we know that this correlation isn’t true. Linguistic bias exists.   

The recent social narrative surrounding President Biden’s stuttering reminds me of The King’s Speech in which Colin Firth plays a tortured King George VI dealing with the emotional rollercoaster only a profound stutter and pressure of public speaking could bring. To me, speaking eloquently seemed like an impossible request. Of course, Firth does so in a crescendo-like, climactic, Oscar-winning performance that had me rolling my eyes. But it also made me all warm and fuzzy inside. I do understand the rewards of accomplishing the task, but is it all worth the physical, mental, and emotional stress?

Is eloquence overrated? 

Literacy abilities are equated with intelligence: both what kinds of literacies we have and the expressions of those literacies. This is problematic. For example, Standardized White English is reinforced as the societal norm in classrooms, the media, on exams, in cultural narratives; consequently the “good” English speaker is centered in the academic sphere – the person who is articulate, eloquent, and has native or near-native English fluency – marginalizing a vast swath of experiences.

Below are reflections from two deaf The Mind Hears readers that capture the emotional and mental tension of performative eloquence. Their experiences also honor, in a small way, the progress we can make towards a broader and more inclusive definition of what it means to be articulate.  

Sara Halpern

The Ohio State University, Modern Jewish & European History

 

Hello, I’m Sara – without an H, thanks — and I was born profoundly deaf in 1985. I learned language through lipreading for the first four years of my life. I still missed out a lot because I was not overhearing conversations or listening to Sesame Street (I liked Mr. Rogers better; at least I could read his lips). Once I was implanted in 1989, there was a period of intense audio therapy before I started kindergarten. Then I continued with speech therapy until I graduated from high school in 2004. While those therapies are no longer part of routine, my mishandling of the spoken and written English language haunted me throughout college and early years of graduate school. 

Like Sara, I internalized that the notion of articulateness, including a strong grasp of my native language, signified intellectual intelligence. I received this messaging when I had to take all those standardized exams, including from the Department of Education and College Board (including AP and GRE), where the rubrics were clear. Phrases such as “well written” and “sophisticated thinking” confounded me. I knew I was smart; I read well above my grade level but somehow I could not spout the “right” words or formulate sentences that could make sense to others.

My own speech pattern further hampered my ability to deliver the way people like the Obamas or George Clooney could. I hated public speaking of any sorts because they were always graded on my ability to speak clearly, pronounce every word correctly, and slow down. Coming from a family of New Yorkers with their rapid fire conversations, it hurt me that I was not allowed to blend in my own family either. Where was I supposed to fit in within the educated, middle-class American ideal of “articulateness” and get an A+ in that?

All that changed when I went abroad to study German and Hebrew and research in various countries where English was not the native language or where English accents were different from my own (Australia and the UK in this case). I found that no one cared how I spoke so as long as I was understandable, which meant slowing down and pronouncing words clearly as they were doing. Since I was doing the same in German and Hebrew, this practice eventually influenced how I spoke English. Every time I returned to the United States, I carried this practice with me and native English speakers responded more positively than before. (Still, every now and then, I get asked if I’m from Germany…) 

After these experiences, I have more or less given up striving to fit ideal standards as imagined by bureaucrats in the Department of Education and the College Board, because we are living in a globalized world where English is the most widely used language, spoken in diverse manners. We are all intelligent but in our own unique ways.

Young white woman sites with a canyon behind her. She wears a baseball hat and glasses. The wooden sign next to her says "Ooh Aah Point".

Alma C. Schrage

University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Natural Resources and Environmental Science

I feel like deaf/HoH folks get socialized early to fit in, to pass, because often the reaction if we say “what?” is being treated as if we are not intelligent…which is kind of a double bind because we can get stuck in situations where we have no idea what is going on and get caught in it.

When I started high school, I joined Model UN because a friend was in it and I wanted to prove I could do it. I had to rely on my partner to relay what everyone was saying. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to communicate, so often she would say “Talk about this issue and why it’s bad because –” That worked fine because I was comfortable ad libbing, and it actually went really well — we got an honorable mention, which was kind of amazing with it being our first conference. But at the same time the award felt kind of empty — it felt like I was just a mouthpiece and not making any of the decisions or critical thinking because I wasn’t receiving the information I needed to do so. I had a mind and was looking for conversation and reciprocity, not empty, performative acts of speaking so the experience was frustrating. I quit after that first conference. Ironically my hearing friend and debate partner was really angry about me quitting – the fact that it was inaccessible didn’t really seem to register with them.

The isolation and lack of access that I experienced as child and teenager because of my good speech is part of what pushed me towards learning American Sign Language (ASL) as an adult: It supported the conversation and connection that I craved, both with signing deaf communities and deaf mentors, but also with the hearing communities I interact with through my advocacy, my work, and going about my daily life. If you sign, people immediately get it — Oh, she’s deaf — and they are more willing to do things like write stuff down or use gestures for basic communication.  I’ve found that as an English and ASL user it has been easier to get hearing academics to think more concretely about accessibility and inclusion, which is desperately lacking in academia. Signing has also made me a better self-advocate when I do speak; my experiences with signing Deaf mentors has pushed me to be more assertive and less patient with hearing attitudes and behaviors that are inaccessible or blatantly discriminatory.

Because of the intersections of my privilege — being a white academic — and my particular deaf experience – having reading as my primary access point to language and learning, plus clear speech – I’ve largely been able to dodge people’s prejudices about speaking “good English” and intelligence. The flipside of that coin has been how it renders my deafness invisible. My speech has often fooled hearing people into thinking I understand more than I do; how could a person profoundly deaf speak so well?

A Way Forward

As we wrote this together and I read about Sara and Alma, one theme became clear: spaces such as The Mind Hears where we can converse are small but integral to understanding the deaf experience beyond ourselves. Adapting to adaptations while being unexpectedly advantageous or savvy feels ironic, but listening, really listening to others’ narratives can offer new ideas for advocacy.   

Sara Heaser is a Lecturer of English at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, where she specializes in basic/co-requisite and first-year writing curriculum, pedagogy, and program development. Her writing about teaching has been featured on the Bedford Bits blog, the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and Composition Studies. Her favorite aspects of her job are mentoring undergraduate education students and new teachers, tutoring adult learners, and teaching first-year, first-semester writing students. She is an alum of the Dartmouth Summer Seminar for Studies in Composition Research and Winona State University.

Making your in-person and remote workplaces accessible for your deaf/HoH colleagues

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The new year brings a fresh start to our lives; it’s a natural time to reflect on the year past and make plans for the coming year. In what is becoming a The Mind Hears New Year tradition (see posts from 2019 and 2020), we have updated our list of recommendations for making your workplace accessible. The listing now includes best practices for remote meetings, a format that dominated our professional interactions in 2020 and will play a role in ‘normal’ operations going forward. While many presume that remote work increases accessibility for deaf/HoH, this is not always the case (see post on suddenly remote teaching and post on accommodating a pandemic). You can view and download the full list of recommendations for making your in-person and remote workplaces accessible for your deaf and hard of hearing colleagues at this link. Here we outline the best approach for increasing workplace accessibility and provide links to blog posts that explore particular aspects in detail.

Universally design your workplace: Our spaces become more inclusive for all when we improve access for any subgroup of our community. Consequently, by increasing the accessibility of our workplaces for our deaf and hard of hearing colleagues, we create a better workplace for everyone (see post on the impact of the Mind Hears). This includes hearing folks who have auditory processing disorder, use English as their second language, or are acquiring hearing loss during their careers. Chances are that someone in your department has hearing loss, whether they’ve disclosed this or not, and will benefit from your efforts to make your workplace more accessible (see post on Where are the deaf/HoH academics). This is why you should universally design your workplace now and not wait until someone who is struggling asks you to make modifications.

Sharing the work: With a google search you can find several resources on workplace accessibility for deaf/HoH employees, such as the Hearing Loss Association of America’s (HLAA) very useful employment toolkit. One drawback of these resources is that nearly all of the suggestions are framed as actions for the deaf/HoH employee. While deaf and hard of hearing academics need to be strong self-advocates and take steps to improve their accommodations, our hearing colleagues can help us tremendously by sharing the work and not expecting us to bear all of the burden of creating accessible workplaces. Speech reading conversations, planning accommodations and making sure that technology/accommodations function is never-ending and exhausting work that we do above and beyond our teaching, research, and service (see post on making an impact at high stakes conferences, post on conquering faculty meetings, and post on teaching very large classes). Your understanding and your help changing our workplaces can make a huge difference to us.  For example, if a speaker doesn’t repeat a question, ask them to repeat, even if you heard the question just fine. The people who didn’t hear the question are already stressed and fatigued from working hard to listen, so why expect them to do the added work of ensuring speakers repeat questions (see post on listening fatigue and post on the mental gymnastics of hearing device use)? Repeating the question benefits everyone. The changes you make today can also help your workplace align with equal opportunity requirements for best hiring practices (see The Mind Hears blog posts about applying for jobs when deaf/HoH here and here).

One size doesn’t fit all: If a participant requests accommodation for a presentation or meeting, follow up with them and be prepared to iterate to a solution that works. It may be signed interpreters (see post on working with sign interpreters and post on networking with deaf colleagues who use interpreters), oral interpreters, CART (see post on Captions and Craptions), or FM systems (see post on Using FM systems at conferences). It could be rearranging the room or modifying the way that the meeting is run. Keep in mind that what works for one deaf/HoH person may not work for another person with similar deafness. What works for someone in one situation may not work at all for that same person in another situation, even if the situations seem similar to you. The best solution will probably not be the first approach that you try nor may it be the quickest or cheapest approach; it will be the one that allows your deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues to participate fully and contribute to the discussion. Reaching the goal of achieving an academic workplace accessible to deaf/HoH academics is a journey.

Want to be a better ally and make your workplace accessible for your deaf and hard of hearing colleagues? Follow this link to read our list of recommendations. We welcome your comments and suggestions either to this post or directly within the document at this link.

Conquering faculty meetings (or not…) when deaf/hard of hearing

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-Ana

Making it as a deaf/hard of hearing (HoH) academic can often feel like a game of whack-a-mole. Between research activities, teaching duties, and that large nebulous category ‘service,’ communication challenges lurk around every corner. Some I can troubleshoot fairly quickly— i.e. arranging a classroom so there is walking space between desks and I can approach my students to better hear them (mole whacked!). Other challenges have required a few more tries, but I’ve eventually figured out viable solutions—i.e. belatedly acquiring an FM system was a game changer when it came to group discussions of papers (mole missed, mole missed, mole whacked!). But there is a situation that I have not yet been able to master, even after many, many years: the departmental faculty meeting.

I had less than a passing knowledge of that special faculty obligation that is the Departmental Faculty Meeting when I started out as an assistant professor. I’d heard some friends and my spouse—people who’d gotten faculty positions before me—mention them, usually accompanied by eye rolls. But I didn’t really have any expectations about what these meetings entailed or what my role in them might be.

Cue over to my first faculty meeting as a deaf/HoH faculty in a predominantly hearing institution. I walked into a an overly large room (overly large for the number of people we had) that looked somewhat like this:

A room with chairs in rows, in which a faculty meeting is taking place. Stick figures are scattered throughout, with one twisting and turning her head in an attempt to speech read what is being said by people in all corners of the room.

We were 15-20 faculty seated in a classroom meant for over 40, with everybody seemingly intent in maximizing their distance from all others. After an hour of feeling like a bobblehead as I desperately twisted my neck trying to speech read my department chair in front and my colleagues in all corners of the room, I came to three conclusions:

1. Faculty (who would have thought!) are just like undergrads, and will beeline for chairs in the last rows of a room

2. Important stuff got discussed in faculty meetings (I think I caught some words that sounded like budgets and curriculum…)

3. I was dead meat, because I could not follow anything that was being said

So I went home and cried. My first year as an assistant professor, I cried after every single faculty meeting. Granted, we didn’t have that many faculty meetings back then, but enough to confirm my deep-rooted fear that I was certainly not going to survive this career path. It was clear to me in my first year that faculty meetings were whipping me soundly; if I were keeping score I would call it: Faculty Meetings 1–Ana 0.

Of course the obvious thing to do would have been to ask my department chair to change the setup of the faculty meetings. After all, my colleagues knew I was hard of hearing and relied on hearing aids for communication. But I was terrified that if my department caught whiff of how much I struggled to hear, this would sow doubts about my competence as a teacher and doom my tenure prospects. Besides, although I had a long history of self-reliance, I had zero experience in self-advocacy. Among my many thoughts were “What in the world falls under the ‘reasonable’ umbrella in reasonable accommodation?” and “oh, wait, I’m not a US citizen, does the ADA [American with Disabilities Act] even cover me?” (I still don’t know the answer to this one).

Towards the end of the academic year I found some courage to request CART (Communication Active Real Time Translation) for a final retreat-style faculty meeting. The captionists were to sit next to me and type out all discussions. My chair knew about the CART, but I (foolishly) didn’t alert the faculty. At the beginning of the meeting, a colleague expressed discomfort about the presence of unknown people in the room (the captionists). Though an explanation brought a quick apology, I felt marked. Added to the captioning time lag that at times jarred with what I could hear, I scored another loss: Faculty Meetings 2–Ana 0.

A transmitter with an omnidirectional microphone placed on a table.

My second year brought a new department chair, a tiny increase in self-confidence, and also an increase in the frequency of faculty meetings. Aaagh! I finally resolved to approach my chair and request that faculty be seated in a round square table format during meetings so that I would have a better shot at speech reading. Simultaneously, I acquired a new FM system and a transmitter with an omnidirectional microphone — a forerunner of the one pictured here. I would place it on the center of the table and voila! OK, so it wasn’t quite 100%, and I was still missing most of the banter and jokes, but jumping from 50 to 90% comprehension (These are completely unscientific numbers. Naturally, there’s no way for me to ever tell how much I’m missing; my estimate is based on my confusion level at the end of meetings) felt wonderful. This was it! I was going to nail this faculty thing! New score: Faculty Meetings 2–Ana 1!

Then my department grew. 

Schematic of a conference setting in a hollow square format.

Okay, I get the fact that department success is gauged in part by growth. And yes, improving faculty-to-student ratios is always a good thing. But growth meant that in order to sit all of us in rectangle we were now sitting like this:

Ummm, with a gaping hole in the middle, where is microphone transmitter to go? I started putting it next to me, but of course this makes it much less likely to pick up voices from those sitting farther away. I considered going back to CART, but at this point I had had my first kid and often had to rush out of faculty meeting before the end in order to make it to daycare pickup; I couldn’t bring myself to subject others to my sometimes ad hoc schedule… so I muddled along and considered this round lost. New score: Faculty Meetings 3–Ana 1.

A Lego knight with shield, sword and helmet. It is pretty happy that no faculty meeting can hurt it now.

Fast forward a few years—the department kept growing. We were now meeting in a large room that combined my two meeting nightmares: square table arrangements with a central hole AND faculty sitting in rows (we no longer all fit around the square). Even worse… recall that faculty are just like undergrads….most actively choose to sit as far away from the center/front of the room if given an option. So much for our “round table.” 

I started to cultivate the attitude recommended by some of my hearing colleagues… faculty meeting, bah, waste of time, place where people go to hear themselves talk, nothing happens there that couldn’t be solved more quickly through email….bah! OK, so attitude was my new weapon armor. By my calculations we were now at this score: Faculty Meetings 4–Ana 2. Ha! A comeback!

Schematic of a conference set up that involves chair lining up the perimeter of a room, as well as table set in a U-shape, with a peninsula in the center also lined with chairs.

A few years later, further department growth and another new chair. But I told this one about my difficulties following discussions whenever we sat in rows. Alas, we were now too many faculty to sit in any sort of rectangular format that would fit in a room. I had started in a department with around 20 people and we now had more than 50! To maximize my visual contact with faculty in a room, we came up with this pretty funky rectangle with peninsula shape. Ummm… perhaps we can call this score: Faculty Meetings 4–Ana 3? We would have patented this design, but there were two problems. The perimeter of the room (around the rectangle) still had to be lined with chairs in order to have enough seating should everybody decide to show up. And see observation #1 above: faculty are just like undergrads. This means that people prefer to take the perimeter spots before they take any rectangle spots. And it turns out that people prefer to STAND IN A CORNER of the room before taking ANY of the peninsula spots in the center. New score: Faculty Meetings 5–Ana 3.

So we get to where we are today. I catch myself wondering how traitorous it is for me to dream of a smaller department while also cultivating a blasé attitude towards faculty meetings so that I release myself from feeling obligated to try and follow the discussions. In a way, this outcome is an anthesis of what a blog post on thriving in academia with deafness should be. Over a decade of trying to find a solution for a way to participate effectively in what should be a routine part of faculty life has led instead to something that resembles an arms race and I have no solution to offer. At the same time, however, this post on getting by in academia with deafness portrays pretty effectively the reality of trying to adjust to shifting communication settings as a deaf/HoH academic. I hesitate to sound as if I’m advocating “managing” as opposed to “thriving” when it comes to facing the fluctuating demands of academic life, but sometimes, while we’re whacking those moles, “managing” is what we can do.

Pandemic addendum: I wrote this post before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, never imagining the ways in which my faculty meeting odyssey would be upended yet again. The thought of meeting in-person with 40-50 colleagues now seems so distant, and new “moles” have appeared in our now virtual faculty meetings (ahem…thinking here of all those who choose to speak with their zoom cameras OFF). Yet I’ve also picked up some new management strategies in the interim… For example, Michele’s recent post points out some of the silver linings for deaf/HoH academics in working from home. And from Paige Glotzer’s profile I’ve now learned of the existence of Catchbox throwable microphones; if when life returns to normal, could this be my new faculty meeting strategy? I can’t wait to see…

Profile: Dr. Khadijat Rashid

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  • Current title: Interim Dean of the Faculty
  • Location: Gallaudet University, Washington DC
  • Field of expertise: International Development, International Economic Policy
  • Years of experience (since start of PhD): 25
  • Website: https://my.gallaudet.edu/khadijat-rashid

.

Background?

I’m deaf, as in profoundly, deeply deaf. I can’t even use hearing aids because they are worthless for me, though I do have an implant that I occasionally use to hear environmental sounds. I went to all kinds of schools: hearing schools for my early elementary education, an all deaf residential school for K-8, a deaf program within a hearing high school (not really mainstreaming since all the deaf students were together with teachers who signed). The journey continued in college, where I was initially the only deaf student at college, then I left in my sophomore year for Gallaudet University where I was finally in an all-deaf environment.  Graduate school was again “mainstreamed” as I was the only deaf student in my MBA program at the University of Maryland, and then the only deaf student in my PhD cohort at American University. So it’s been quite a journey! I studied International Relations for my PhD because I was not going to be limited by my deafness and I was determined to study in a field that had nothing to do with Deaf people or deaf culture, and so of course, I ended up as a faculty member and administrator at Gallaudet!

I am an American immigrant. I was born in Nigeria, West Africa, and emigrated to the USA as a teenager, so most of my life has been in the USA. I speak Yoruba (a Nigerian language), and can “pass” in Nigerian Sign Language, pidgin (a creole hybrid of Nigerian languages and English), and of course, English.

How did you get to where you are?

As mentioned earlier, I wanted to study in a field that wasn’t defined by my being deaf, and I was always fascinated with economics, politics, and different cultures. And I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I grew up, so I decided I would study in as many different fields as possible. So, my undergraduate degrees (accounting, general business and computer information systems) were in the business field, and I worked for a while in a large corporation. Then I went for my MBA in International Business and Marketing. But I got disillusioned with the materialism I saw everywhere in Business and decided to go back to study these areas I had always been fascinated by, international politics and political economy. I wanted to understand what differentiated us as human beings, and how our economic interactions worked. I loved my PhD studies at American University (AU), which were a blend of anthropology, critical theory, international relations, politics, and economics —just what the doctor ordered for my eclectic interests! I took the long and meandering route to that PhD, since I started it in 1995 and took several detours, including several moves and the birth of two kids, along the way to completion in 2004. I even got expelled from the program because I was taking so long to complete the degree, but managed to talk my way back in 2003, promising that if they only gave me a chance, I would complete my PhD in a year. They took a risk and let me back in, and once that fire was lit under me, even though I had two kids under 5 by then, I did finish on time.

When I started out, there were still relatively few deaf women with PhD’s, and none in my field that I was aware of. Moreover, I was a young, Black, Deaf immigrant juggling a full-time job (I was already teaching at Gallaudet by this point), kids, and full-time graduate studies, so it was not a piece of cake. It definitely wasn’t easy. Sometimes I was so tired, it felt impossible to go on. But somehow I found that impetus from within me, and at some point the goal felt attainable, especially as I’d already sunk so much into the PhD by then. I also had my job as a faculty member to consider – I had to have that PhD if I wanted to advance, and I felt I couldn’t let down all the people who had invested in me and who were counting on me to make it. My advisor and the program faculty at AU were all terrific people, and their faith in me when I didn’t have faith in myself spurred me on.

What is the biggest professional challenge you face (as educator or researcher)? How do you mitigate this challenge?

As an administrator now, I really don’t have as much time anymore for the fun aspects of the job, which include teaching and research. Instead, I spend more time in meetings and solving issues for our faculty and staff, so that they can then go on to serve our students. I loathe that I don’t see that many students anymore since my schedule is not consistent enough for me to teach regularly, so I get my “fix” by mentoring students, attending events, and having open office hours where they can come and talk with me.

This year, a huge challenge has been COVID and the pivot to remote learning. If anyone had told me in January 2020 that we would move an entire university from face to face teaching to remote in less than a month, I’d have asked them what they were smoking. But we did it and we continue to do it now. Keeping students and faculty engaged while we are all apart and isolated has been tough, but I’m proud to say that our community is resilient and we are making it work. We do so by having regular information sessions, hosting webinars, and sending out information blasts frequently. I’ve found that the greatest anxiety is in not knowing; sharing information, even the bad stuff, helps people understand what is happening, and many are relieved and appreciative to know what is going on.

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

Can’t think of any. Gallaudet is fully accessible to me as a Deaf woman.  

What advice would you give your former self?

Be braver and trust yourself! So often I didn’t speak up during my assistant professor days because I didn’t want to be that “angry Black woman,” or make people uncomfortable, or rock the boat. But sometimes that boat deserves to be rocked. I look back at all the grunt work I had to do, the committee assignments no one else wanted, the classes I had to teach even when I had a sick baby at home with no time off, the department meetings at odd hours that meant I wouldn’t see my kids awake at all that week… all the stuff that faculty today would and should protest. 

Now I make it a point to try and recognize when things like that are happening, and I’m actually in a position now to prevent them most of the time. And every time I have spoken up against an unfair situation, I have found that others often felt the same way, but perhaps were afraid or insecure or too junior, and were just waiting for someone to take the lead to change things. So now I try to be that person. I’m far enough along in my career that speaking out no longer carries the risk it did in my earlier days, and I use that superpower to hopefully smoothen the path for others coming after me.

Any funny stories you want to share?

Hmm… thinking… my kids are now 18 and 21 and they ask me all the time if I actually have a real job, because all they see is me at my computer typing away or signing during a meeting. They can’t believe I get paid to do that!

What is your typical day like?

Start at 8.30 am with a meeting over zoom. I’m quite the zoom expert now! More meetings until noon, get some work done, paperwork signed, attend a strategy session, feel hungry and wonder why, then realize it’s past 2pm and eat lunch at my desk while responding to emails. More meetings, and then finally call it a day around 8pm. Boring! But that’s a COVID day for you.

To Hear, or Not to Hear? The Mental Gymnastics of Hearing Device Use

advocacy, daily grind, job searches, meetings, networking, , ,
A word cloud showing the most common appearing words in the post in different colors.
Alt text. A word cloud showing the most common appearing words in the post in different colors.

-Sarah Sparks

I had planned to write this post about listening fatigue, but as I began writing I realized that a related yet rarely discussed topic resonated more in the moment. This post is my attempt at addressing the complexity of that topic.

The mental gymnastics involved in deciding whether and/or when to use hearing devices is not discussed often—at least publicly. This can be an uncomfortable topic because the decisions about amplification use made by deaf and hard of hearing people have an impact on how we are viewed within our professions, the willingness of other people to take our accommodation needs seriously, and the assumptions made by others about our communication needs and preferences. Ideally, decisions about amplification use should be made freely. That doesn’t always happen in the context of an audist society. Some might argue that because of audism (the belief that hearing and speaking are superior to deafness and signing, and the consequent discrimination), none of these decisions are ever truly free.

I am against audism in all its forms, and I also believe it is possible to genuinely like and want amplified sound for its own sake, not because of attempts to assimilate to the hearing world. But perhaps more often than we would like to admit, deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) professionals who use hearing devices make decisions about device use based on what others expect rather than what feels best to us as individuals. 

I identify as deaf. I am a full-time, bilateral cochlear implant (CI) user who also communicates in and loves both American Sign Language (ASL) and English. In times past I would wear my CI processors from the moment I woke up in the morning until about an hour before going to bed at night, sometimes topping 18 hours of device use in a day. That was exhausting, and I’m glad that I have since found a CI use pattern more suited to my needs. These days I am still a full-time CI user in that my device use averages approximately 8 hours per day, but rarely do I use my processors outside of professional situations. I’m a pediatric audiologist, and I work with many hearing children and their parents as well as the hearing parents of deaf and hard of hearing children. I care about communicating with all of them in their native language whenever possible. Because of this, my processors go on as soon as I walk into clinic in the morning and they come off as soon as I’m on my way home in the evening. If I have class or a meeting in the evening, generally I will keep them on for that purpose. 

Mostly, I’m comfortable with my current CI usage. But my choices come with unique kinds of personal and professional costs that affect neither hearing professionals nor deaf professionals who don’t use devices. The decision to use my CIs as frequently (or infrequently) as I do has a downside that I don’t discuss often: the constant need to evaluate why I use them (or not). Every day, I notice how my decisions interact with others’ conscious and subconscious expectations for me not just as a deaf person, but also as a person with auditory access. Confident as I am in my decisions to switch up my communication—ASL, spoken English, or written English depending on the situation—often I find myself wondering about my CI use pattern and messages that others may infer, independent of anything I say directly.

Does using my CIs full time lead others to believe that I value spoken language over signed language? Maybe I need to clarify every other day that I love ASL and that spoken-language access isn’t the only reason I use my CIs…

Do my coworkers and other acquaintances see my CIs and assume that if my processors are on, they should always speak instead of sign? Maybe I should use my processors only when I want people to speak to me, but then I wouldn’t get to use them for many of the sounds I genuinely want to hear…

How does my CI use impact the willingness of employers and conference/event organizers to fulfill requests for accommodations? In the past, people have heard the clarity of my speech and thought I was exaggerating when I described the limits of my CI hearing. Maybe I’ll have to explain for the thousandth time that my speech is so clear because I wasn’t born deaf, lost my hearing progressively, and don’t hear nearly as well as I speak. Maybe this is why some deaf professionals who can hear and speak choose not to…

If I prefer to speechread my way through certain kinds of interactions, am I leading others to believe that I don’t need visual language? Maybe the access problems I experience are my own fault for opting to communicate in two languages…

If I remove my CI processors for a few hours while among colleagues in my profession, will they see me as irresponsible and make wrong assumptions about how I counsel my own CI patients? Maybe they’ll lose trust in me as a clinician or researcher and assume that I’m recommending lackadaisical or capricious device use…

My signing is clearly non-native: if I’m around other deaf professionals, is wearing my processors (even without batteries) necessary to remind them that I’m not a hearing person? Maybe they’ll see me as just another hearing audiologist if I’m not wearing them… or despite my wearing them…

Are my CIs sending the message that deaf/HoH people can be audiologists and hearing scientists only if we use CIs? Maybe I’m hurting someone else’s opportunities unintentionally just by trying to be deaf in the way that feels most okay for me…

What message does my observable CI use pattern send about deaf/HoH professionals who don’t use hearing devices at all or use their devices differently than I do? Maybe my own decisions affect whether they can get their access needs met…These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when I’m deciding whether to turn on my artificial, electronic auditory access. Needing to think through these and other costs of my CI use pattern is almost as exhausting as listening fatigue itself. Multiple times a day, I have to decide which is more important: using my CIs in the ways that feel best to me, or using them in ways that are least likely to result in negative consequences for me and other deaf/HoH professionals. Every day, I have to decide which battles I’m willing to fight and how my choices about CI use affect my ability to do so. I know that I can’t be the only deaf CI user who struggles with navigating these concerns both inside and outside of academia.

A dark haired woman, with hair pulled back and dark-framed glasses is smiling. She wears a dark colored blazer and has a cochlear implant.
Alt text. A dark haired woman, with hair pulled back and dark-framed glasses is smiling. She wears a dark colored blazer and has a cochlear implant.

Dr. Sarah Sparks: Dr. Sparks holds a clinical Doctorate in Audiology (Au.D.) from Gallaudet University. She has experience in a variety of clinical settings, including a university clinic, private practice, school for the deaf, and two pediatric hospitals. She completed her final year of clinical education at Boston Children’s Hospital where she also held a fellowship in the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program. She is currently studying at Gallaudet for a Ph.D. in Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences. Her clinical and research interests include pediatrics, vestibular assessment and rehabilitation, cochlear implants, the audiologist’s role in counseling and self-advocacy skill development, and audiology services provided in American Sign Language. Her Ph.D. dissertation research will focus on vestibular dysfunction and its impact on deaf/HoH children.

Profile: Dr. Paige Glotzer

profiles, ,
  • Current title: Assistant Professor and John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Chair in the History of American Politics, Institutions, and Political Economy, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Location: Madison, Wisconsin
  • Field of expertise: U.S. history
  • Years since PhD: 4
  • Twitter: @apaigeoutofhist; link to website 

Background

I was an only child in Brooklyn, NY, raised by supporting and loving parents. Neither is hard of hearing. Growing up, I never met other HoH/Deaf kids or got accommodations in school. We never watched things with captions or did anything that would help me gain the vocabulary to articulate my experiences. I was likely born HoH, but I finally got diagnosed at age seven and I didn’t get hearing aids until age 16. I got them when a noisy air conditioner in a classroom finally made it impossible for me to compensate with lip reading and context clues. I remember crying because at the time I thought getting hearing aids meant I had a deficit that I couldn’t overcome with effort. (To this day I sometimes don’t appreciate the extent to which I constantly work hard to hear, but I definitely don’t consider myself as having a loss or deficit). I somehow muddled through college with good grades, still unable and unwilling to communicate my needs. It really took graduate school for me to become empowered and proud of who I am. It’s there that I found allies and actually met other HoH and Deaf people. It was there that I first learned terms like “ableism.” I sometimes get frustrated thinking back on all the things that could have been. What if I had learned ASL when I was little? What if I had been exposed to Deaf culture growing up? I try to channel those feelings in productive ways. For example, over the last couple of years I have made a lot of progress with my parents on explaining to them why I need to see their lips when they talk. We already had a great relationship but it’s getting even better now.

How did you get to where you are?

Becoming a historian was a no-brainer for me. I’ve always been interested in history and I’ve always been interested in cities. Long before I formally pursued this career path, my favorite activity was walking through cities and wondering why they looked or functioned in certain ways. I have sharpened those questions over time to focus on the business of housing segregation. 

I have been reflecting on the past lately because my first book, How the Suburbs Were Segregated, was just published in April. It began as a paper I wrote my first year of graduate school in 2010. Graduate school got off to a rough start. It was the first day and I was excited to begin my path toward my dream job of historian. I walked into my first seminar, sat down, and realized with dawning horror that I couldn’t hear a single thing. The professor mumbled. The room echoed. We were seated in a formation where no one directly faced each other. I spent two silent hours trying to hold back tears. Later that day I finally realized: if I wanted to be a historian, I was going to have to do not just the work my peers did but also all the extra work of creating conditions where I could hear. I did that work, I am doing it now as a professor, and know I’ll always have to.

What is the biggest professional challenge (as educator or researcher)? How do you mitigate this challenge?

I face the challenge of teaching classes where some students have taken college-level U.S. history sitting next to others who have never had American history in their entire lives. Being a disabled educator has inspired me to meet this challenge by applying the principles of universal design to my teaching. I ask myself what decisions about pedagogy, content, and course design will create scaffolding and flexibility for everyone. Universal design has also allowed me to consider the intersections of disability with different experiences students face. For example, I make all my readings available digitally and for free. This makes the readings more accessible for students, but it also helps students who might not be able to afford to purchase books. I do not put the burden on the student to request an exception to some sort of “normal;” I teach for everyone.

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

Volume Amplification helps me do my job better. I have worked with my department to ensure that microphones will be used at all meetings and events with over ten people. For teaching, I use something called Catch Boxes, squishy cubes with microphones inside. My students can toss the Catch Boxes to each other and speak into them. It’s a form of amplification that’s scalable from my small classes, where I use one Catch Box, up through large lectures where I use two or more. The great thing about the Catch Boxes is that they open up new pedagogic possibilities—I can have free-flowing discussions even in a large lecture. My colleagues who are not hard of hearing generally write that off as impossible.

Any funny stories you want to share?

It’s difficult to think of a single story because sometimes my life feels like one long blooper reel. The way that I hear makes distinguishing certain sounds from one another very difficult. Unfortunately, that means I have a very hard time knowing whether someone has said ‘Paige’ or ‘Kate.’ This is a problem whenever I’m in the room with a Kate, which is weirdly often! I happened to sit behind a Kate for most of my senior year of high school. Those were fun times. 

Pale skinned woman with short wavy brown hair and plaid shirt laughs while looking downward

Advice to younger self

“You internalized a lot of shame and anxiety about your hearing because you thought your hearing was an inconvenience to others rather than an important part of who you are. It is okay to ask to turn on captions. It is okay to demand accommodations. And you are justified in feeling frustration or anger when people make ableist assumptions. You’ll learn to become a better advocate for yourself over time.”

Profile: Alex Lu

grad school, networking, profiles,

PhD Student, University of Toronto, Canada

Field of expertise: Computational Biology

Years of experience (since start of PhD): 5 years 

Describe your hearing: Profoundly deaf; I’m oral and voice for myself, but I use ASL interpreters for professional interactions

Background

I grew up mainstreamed in Vancouver. For most of grade school, I used hearing aids —back when I was in elementary school, we still had those clunky FM systems that attached to your hearing aids through wires and boots. I was lucky to have a hearing resource teacher who recognized the importance of sign language, and she brought in a Deaf teacher to teach me and a few other Deaf/hard-of-hearing students the basics in grade 9. In grade 11, I decided to stop using my hearing aids entirely. Part of my decision was practical—I had a progressive hearing loss, and it was getting to the point where I felt like my hearing aids weren’t helping enough to be worth the headache they gave me from amplifying everything. But the other reason was because I had grown to resent what they represented: how hearing people always expected me to “fix” myself to be acceptable to them. My parents and teachers were furious—I was in the middle of a highly intensive International Baccalaureate program and they didn’t know how I would get through it. But I managed to cobble together strategies, including basic ASL and borrowing notes from classmates. I’ve used ASL interpretation for my academic needs ever since. 

I’m also queer, and outside of academia, I do a lot of activism in bridging Deaf and queer communities. For a while before my PhD (and even well into it), I was active in many non-profits. Some of my fondest memories include negotiating accessibility in Pride boardrooms, emceeing Deaf poets for spoken word festival events, and moderating all-Deaf panels about prison justice. 

How did you get to where you are?

Many people in academia will talk about how they’ve always known what they’ve wanted to study since they were very small. I am definitely not one of those people. Rather, I got to my current interests by taking opportunities as they arose, and by being receptive to advice. I began studying computational biology as an undergraduate because a family friend mentioned it might appeal to me. I had many interests and didn’t know whether I wanted to major in English or history or a science; I figured that their advice was as good as any. As I worked through my degree, I met a graduate student who asked me to volunteer for a lab that wanted someone with computational skills, and I specifically got involved in image analysis because that was the data the lab worked with. That experience opened the door to my PhD; I applied to just two graduate schools upon finishing my undergraduate, and I figured that if I didn’t get into either, I would just start my career. But one graduate school liked my background enough that they accepted me, and I’ve been working in image analysis and computer vision ever since. 

That isn’t to say that I am not passionate about what I do; I love working on challenges in big biological image datasets, and it really challenges my creative problem solving skills. But I am fundamentally a very flexible person, and I can easily see alternative histories where I stumbled into something radically different—comparative literature, maybe, or psychology—and would have been equally as happy and passionate about that. In retrospect, taking opportunities as they arose was a very good strategy for me as a marginalized disabled person—it meant that I was always surrounded by people who were eager to invite me into their space, so I attribute a lot of my success to being easy-going enough that I could let these people guide my journey. 

What is the biggest professional challenge? How do you mitigate this challenge?

Anything that involves travel. I never know whether I will be able to find qualified accessibility services when I travel for conferences or other academic commitments. For conferences, my school has been terrific about having my regular academic ASL interpreters fly out with me: we have flown to New York, Los Angeles, and Vancouver together, and that guarantees that I can be fully involved in the important networking connections that are being made there. However, this is not a problem I have fully solved. I’m due to spend three months in Switzerland for a research exchange soon, and since they use a different sign language than mine, I wasn’t able to find local services. I’ve had to come up with more creative solutions; my current plan is to have my interpreters in Toronto Skype with me remotely for regular meetings, and I will have to see how this works out. But in general, I think about academic mobility a lot for disabled people. While a lot of my able-bodied peers are able to take jobs and opportunities anywhere in the world, I feel like there are more hurdles for me, and I’m trying to find ways to not let this limit the steps I can take in my career. 

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

I have an awesome accessibility plan with my school, which gives me “block times.” Three or four afternoons a week, I have an ASL interpreter present for any needs that might pop up: a collaborator or student showing up for a meeting, impromptu chats with my supervisor or colleagues, seminars that I learn about last-minute but seem interesting. The interpreter is booked regardless of there’s something happening or not, and if it turns out to be a quiet afternoon, she spends her time on prep or coordination. 

This accommodation has really made a massive impact on my success in my program and career. For example, it makes collaborations a lot easier: while I could book interpretation for each specific meeting happening, having to set a date three weeks ahead to confirm interpretation is a lot less convenient than a collaborator just dropping in with short notice to discuss how a project is proceeding. Similarly, I don’t have to devote a lot of energy into keeping abreast of departmental and campus events to be able to request interpretation ahead of time—I can spontaneously go to seminars as other graduate students mention them to me. It’s really leveled the playing field a lot in terms of how much time and energy I have to devote to being engaged and available as a scientist, compared to hearing people. 

What advice would you give your former self?

You work way better 9 to 5! I can’t believe how much more productive I became after I started sleeping 8 hours a night and giving myself more downtime—sometimes fewer working hours is more! 

Any funny stories you want to share?

I once helped host an ASL-interpreted theatre production. I taught the director how to say “thank you” in ASL, so she could wave goodbye to the community members I had invited as they were leaving the show. Unfortunately, between the start and end of the play, she forgot that the sign starts from the mouth, not the chin, and ended up signing “fuck you” all night… (People had a good sense of humor about it).

Profile: Dr. Stephanie Kerschbaum

profiles,

Associate Professor of English, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

Field of expertise: Writing Studies

  • Website
  • Twitter: @slkersch (although I rarely use it)

Describe your hearing: I wear two behind-the-ear hearing aids and speechread well in one-on-one and small-group settings. Due to years of childhood speech therapy, I use my voice to communicate for myself when conversing with hearing people and sign when around other signing deaf people.

Here’s me—in this professional head shot my short brown hair, red rectangular glasses, white skin, and many-toothed smile are readily visible, but my two behind-the-ear hearing aids are not. I have been deaf since birth. When I was about one, my parents learned I was deaf and my mom immediately enrolled us in parent-child sign language classes. I learned to sign before I could talk, but once I began talking, my mother reports that I largely stopped signing. 

I never completely let go of that early language learning, however—while I do not have deaf family members (other than those who have late-in-life hearing loss), I did attend a school with a significant population of deaf students from 5th through 8th grade, and began using sign language interpreters and CART when I went to college at The Ohio State University. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to start graduate school in literary studies, but after taking an “Intro to Comp Studies” course as an MA student, ended up getting my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition.

I’m currently an associate professor of English at the University of Delaware, where I think a lot about different forms of writing and composing with and around disability as well as the ways that disability matters to all kinds of everyday experiences. I didn’t start focusing on disability studies until I was well into my first tenure-track job, though—it took me a long time to make explicit connections between my lived experiences of negotiating communication, interactional access, and building an academic career with the kind of theorizing I was doing around how people name and articulate differences—of all kinds—during everyday interactions. 

One of the biggest challenges that I face—and that is common to many disabled faculty members—involves building inclusive environments in which I can authentically and fully participate. By this, I mean situations where I can contribute in a timely fashion to an ongoing conversation or meeting in a way that enables others to attend to what I am sharing and incorporate it into the discussion. Too often, disabled faculty members experience environments where their participation is marginalized or mediated through interfaces, material arrangements, and patterns of behavior that frustrate rather than enable inclusion. 

In a room of 10 people I’m not likely to be able to completely follow a back and forth conversation without an interpreter. And even when an interpreter is in the room, I almost always still need to ask for some shifts in the interaction. Right now almost all of the responsibility for making those changes falls on me. So the hardest part is getting others in the room to participate in the work that is involved in making the kinds of changes needed.

An accommodation I’d love to have is actually an improvement on one that I already have and enjoy using. I love working with sign language interpreters. But there’s so much that goes on around making that work proceed well that I’d really like to have automatically be part of the experience: getting access copies of scripted remarks without having to go through complicated negotiations each time; well-structured processes for securing interpreting in which highly qualified interpreters well-trained in academic transliteration are readily available; having presenters, meeting organizers, and committee chairs consider interpreters’ needs when setting up rooms, sending out meeting materials, and more.

When to tell? Applying for jobs when you are deaf or hard of hearing

job searches, networking, , , ,

-Ana

Going on the job market was a fraught decision for me. As a postdoc considering tenure-track faculty positions, I relied on hearing aids and lip-reading for communication, but, due to my background, I was unaware not just of assistive technologies that could help with communication, but of the very existence of campus offices dedicated to providing accommodations. My struggles in grad school and as a postdoc had left me with severe doubts (enough to fill another blog post) about whether academia was a career path I could follow. Despite my misgivings, a supportive advisor encouraged me to try my hand at the job market, thus setting the stage for a second set of excruciating decisions to be made: What should I tell the search committees about my hearing loss? When should I reveal it? How much should I tell?

If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Ryan Seslow’s wonderful post about the numerous concerns a deaf/hard-of-hearing (HoH) applicant might have concerning equal consideration from search committees. Regardless of regulations to prevent discrimination (and such rules likely do not exist in every country), every step of the hiring process has potential for bias against candidates with hearing loss. Also sobering is Michele’s recent post about the leaky pipeline for deaf and hard-of-hearing academics. Could bias against deaf/HoH candidates during the hiring process contribute to the “leaks”? The topic of disclosing (or not) disabilities to employers has even been recently featured in the New York Times, and I have just now picked up a fascinating book of collected essays about disclosing disability in higher education. With this backdrop, it is clear that deciding what to tell and when is not a decision to be taken lightly.

With these concerns in mind, in summer 2019 The Mind Hears solicited responses to a very short survey about when folks chose to reveal their deafness. The 25 survey responders spanned people in a range of positions and career stages, with at least two actively on the
market, and the rest ranging from postdocs to lecturers, faculty on and off tenure tracks, researchers, and at least one retired professor. The survey showed that preferred communication methods varied widely, with a great majority of respondents reporting that they rely primarily on speech reading and hearing aids, but a little over 40% use sign language (Fig. 1).

While the number of responses prevents an comprehensive treatise on how deaf/HoH academics approach the job search process, this survey does provide a series of snapshots of choices that have been made—and why they have been made. Many personal factors can play a role in these decisions—such as upbringing, prior positive or negative experiences in disclosing hearing loss, primary mode of communication, career stage, and the type of institution applying to. Cultural shifts in social climate may also influence whether a strategy may be more appealing today than it was 20 years ago. Regardless of the limitations of the survey, as you sift through these snapshots of experiences, you may find something that resonates with your history or that gives you an idea of how to move forward in your own job search.

The first question we asked was: At what point in your job application for a professional position have you chosen to reveal your deafness? Among our respondents, the most common choice was “upon being invited to the interview,” followed by two polar opposites: “never” or “in the application materials”(Fig. 2). Various minor choices involved situational circumstances, the fact that application materials strongly suggested (but did not overtly reveal) deafness, or revealing only once the job offer was accepted.

What prompted people to make their choice? Those who never revealed their deafness or revealed it late in the process (during the interview or upon acceptance) expressed strong concerns about bias. Here is a sample of replies:

“ I have been rejected before the interview which I assume is because of my disclosure of being deaf.”

 “Not wanting to make a fuss, not wanting to give them the opportunity to [discriminate], thinking that I could get by without them knowing anyway.”

“worried about discrimination and also feel[ing] that it doesn’t affect my ability to do job so it isn’t any of their business.”

For those who revealed their deafness upon being invited to interview, the overriding concern was that their application would be evaluated without prejudice, but that performance during the interview would not be misinterpreted:

“I want to be upfront about the reason why I may asking ‘what’ more often than the hearing person so it doesn’t reflect poorly on me. It’s not that I’m not listening, it’s just that I physically couldn’t hear you.”

 “You need to make sure you are able to hear in the interview, and prepare the interviewers for any gaps in understanding that occur as a result of your not hearing them well.”

 “I want my resume to be read without any bias. If my resume gets selected for interview, it is based on my merits. So, at that time I let the interviewer know about my deafness to get necessary accommodations for a smooth conversation. However, I understand that even at that stage the bias can creep in.”

 “I like to be upfront and let the interviewer know that I will be using VRS [Video Relay Service]—I want a workplace that will be open to my being Deaf so like to bring it up as early as possible in a relatively nonchalant way.”

 “I didn’t want my disability to determine whether or not I would be invited to campus. I didn’t want interviewers to think I was strange if I tried to pass as a hearing person, so I told the committee that invited me for the interview.”

Those who chose to reveal their deafness early on, in the application materials, felt that valuable information about them would be lost without a reveal, or knew practices in their field would require challenging communication situations arising early in the process:

“I had one significant outreach in the Deaf community and wanted institutions to know that would likely be part of my service as a professor.”

 “The job was for a post in a university as a deaf studies and sign language lecturer, so it was advantageous to tell them at that time.”

“Most jobs in my field do first round interviews via Skype or Zoom and I cannot hear the committee members.”

We then asked: What accommodations have you requested during job interviews, and how have these requests been received? In my case, this question brought back painful memories. Because the concept of asking for accommodation was so foreign to me—I had an ingrained belief that my “problem” was mine alone to solve—the only accommodation I requested was that my host repeat all audience questions for me. I still cringe at recalling the most challenging part of my interview days—lunch with the graduate students, generally a large group, with many too shy to speak loudly. I had the terrified feeling that if I as much as glanced down at my pizza slice I was going to miss an incredibly important question from a person across the room whom I could not hear nor speech read. Fortunately, some respondents were much more savvy than I was, though, as you may expect, the answers were as diverse as deaf/HoH individuals can be.

Some folks opted not to request accommodations or to bring their own communication tools or approaches:

“None; I don’t want to doom my chances from the start.”

“None, I bring my own FM system and do my own research about the panel beforehand to see if there may be any additional concerns for speech reading.”

 “I reveal my HoH state right up front as soon as we’re introduced, explain that I might need to ask them to repeat themselves and [if] necessary, ask people to move closer.”

Several job seekers mentioned orchestrating seating arrangements in order to facilitate communication:

“I did not request formal accommodations but did ask for clarification within conversations and chose my seats carefully at meals [so that I could follow conversation].”

“Rearranging a room for my job talk in order to make the seating shallower and to make it more easy for me to walk up to folks during the Q&A.”

“No specific accommodations. I’ve told people I needed to see their face to lipread, and sometime I’ve asked to sit in a different place to help with lipreading. I see this as casually saying I have a hearing impairment, if needed, rather than formally declaring it as a disability.”

 Some job seekers explicitly requested accommodations for the interviews with mixed responses:

 “Used CART or written questions for onsite interviews; Caption phone for phone interviews. 60% of the time, it was not an issue. At other times, people did not understand the accommodation process and tried to speak instead of writing questions, or say like “I don’t know why, but he is using a special phone”, even after having informed about it in advance. At that time, I had to repeat the need for accommodation.”

 “I have used interpreters in interviews and this practice generated all kinds of rude and/or illegal inquiries. I have had an interpreter blocked from parts of the all-day academic dog-and-pony-show interview on the grounds it was the “confidential” part (only to find the other party sitting with his back to the bright window, rocking post-stroke half-face paralysis and a Western movie sheriff moustache).”

“Sign language interpreters, request was very positively received.”

Ultimately, our worry is that conscious or unconscious bias will lead search committees to assume that we are not suitable for the positions. But how to limit the effect of bias when we communicate our needs? We asked respondents how they reassured committees of their job suitability. Some suggested highlighting the unique strengths of being deaf/HoH:

 “I make sure to show the positive aspects as they would relate to the job, ‘I have these sets of skills and they would assist me in this position in the following way.’ These are not just skills that ‘make up for’ my hearing, but skills that I have [that] add an advantage over hearing individuals or individuals that don’t speech read or know sign language. Being multilingual is typically a plus on a search.”

 “My PhD advisor and I talked about how he would describe my deafness within his letter of recommendation. I had some concerns that he would take a ‘pitying’ tone and in our conversation I was able to suggest to him some ways to frame my hearing loss as one of my characteristics rather than as a challenge to be overcome. He seemed to understand so I trusted that his letter would assuage any fears of the committee. My PhD advisor had also been impressed with the significant effort that I had put into disability advocacy during my PhD. I believe that he framed this as my passion for serving the community.”

A few job seekers were confident that the search committee would judge their strong qualification fairly:

“I trust that my CV speaks for itself, as well as outlining my capabilities/communication methods in my covering letter.”

 “My qualifications show suitability in and of itself, confidence is key and knowing exactly what accommodations I need.”

Sadly, also common among survey respondents were concerns that the whole process is unfairly stacked against deaf/HoH applicants, or that the only way to be perceived as competent is to disclose as little as possible:

“My work history speaks for itself. I’ve been teaching for 13 years […]. But since I rarely make it to interview stage, I don’t even get to reassure the committee members of my suitability for the job.”

“After several interviews where both having an interpreter (‘do we have to pay a second person to have you work here??’) and not having an interpreter (‘but her answer to my question was not what I asked. She should have had an interpreter if she could not hear me’) did not work, I made a deal with the devil to get a [cochlear implant] so that I could fake it through the interview as a HoH person, just showing them that I could fit in. I did not draw a great deal of attention to my deafness. I know people on the search committee and the hiring Dean knew that I was deaf and used interpretation in other settings. However, I wasn’t going to bring it up if they didn’t. Surprisingly enough, that actually did work. I kept my head down and did minimal committee service and very non-interactive classroom style teaching until I was tenured before I began [to ask] for interpreting. The more interpreting I have had access to since then, the more effective my overall professional performance has been. It is a shame that businesses only see the cost of it, and not the performance improvement.”

Because the role of search committees is essentially to eliminate applicants, the job application process is a loaded situation for all, deaf/HoH or not. And it tends to be pretty easy for search committees to come up with reasons not to hire somebody, regardless of any anti-bias regulations put in place. As a result, it is also nearly impossible to prove that a hiring committee has discriminated based on an applicant being deaf/HoH. However, the fact that communication is such a critical and continuous component of academic jobs greatly increases the possibility that our deafness will be erroneously perceived to compromise our likelihood of academic success — before we even get a chance to prove prejudices wrong. There is no easy fix for this; the only one I can think of is to normalize the presence of deaf/HoH academics to the extent that any request for accommodation is seen as routine. Those of us who already hold positions have a role to play here, perhaps in being more forward about requesting accommodations, and in making sure that our deafness is recognized by colleagues and administrators. We should also make sure that diversity initiatives in academia explicitly incorporate disability as an important facet of diversity.

We are very grateful to all people who responded to the survey and were willing to share their experiences with us. Thank you for taking the time to share your stories. Such sharing can only help all of us, and we hope others will feel inspired to keep on paying it forward in the comments below.