Author: Court Cox

ASL

A Semi-Brief Fascinating History of American Sign Language + Resources for Learning

Posted on | by Court Cox

There is a vast misconception among hearing Americans that American Sign Language is English on the hands, but in fact, it is a full language with its own unique syntax, grammar, idioms and modes of expression. Let’s take a dive into its fascinating history, and then we’ll explore some resources available to you right now to start learning how to sign.

In the early 1800s, Alice Cogswell, a nine-year-old girl, met her neighbor, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who observed Cogswell’s high intelligence despite her being unable to speak or hear. Gallaudet decided he wanted to be able to communicate with Cogswell. He tried teaching her to read and write with some success, but Gallaudet and Cogswell’s father agreed that a formal education would yield better results. At the time, however, there were no deaf schools in the United States.

Gallaudet traveled to Europe to learn about deaf education methods, and when he came back to the U.S., he was accompanied by Laurent Clerc, a deaf educator who taught using French Sign Language (LSF). In 1817, Gallaudet and Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf.

Deaf students across America traveled to Hartford, Connecticut to attend the free public school. Up to this point, there was no standard sign language used in the country, so the students brought with them their individual home and community signs. As these signs mixed together and were influenced by Clerc’s native French Sign Language in his teaching, American Sign Language was born.

Many of the students who first attended Gallaudet and Clerc’s new school arrived from Martha’s Vineyard, a Massachusetts island south of Cape Cod with a high hereditary deaf population. From the mid 17th century until its extinction in 1954, Martha’s Vineyard did have its own sign language, which both hearing and deaf people used with high prevalence in the 18th and 19th centuries. Per The Atlantic: according to island records, the first congenitally deaf resident of Martha’s Vineyard was Jonathan Lambert, who immigrated in 1640 from Kent, England, bringing with him his regional sign language. Jonathan Lambert’s children, born on the island, were born deaf, and with them and the island’s next several generations, Lambert’s sign language grew and evolved into Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). As residents began moving into the mainland, in part for the new deaf school, the prevalence of MVSL began to decline. The last native signer or MVSL passed away in the 1950s, officially making it a dead language.

Today, American Sign Language (ASL)  continues to evolve.  For example, as illustrated by the New York Times article on the evolution of sign language, the sign for PHONE used to use two hands, depicting the motion of holding an old-school candlestick telephone transmitter to the mouth and receiver to the ear. Today, the common sign for PHONE is the familiar single-handed gesture of holding the hand to the ear with the thumb and pinky sticking out, or sometimes simply the hand position you use to hold a cell phone to your ear.

We also see ASL evolve with the high prevalence of small screens. When you’re signing via video call, the signs need to fit into the screen. The sign for DOG used to be a double pat on the upper thigh, whereas now it is more commonly signed with a different sign, which is tighter and directly in front of the body–an initialized version of the fingerspelling of the word in which the signer snaps twice.

And while social media has surely influenced the way regional signs spread, various dialects of ASL still exist, just as they do in spoken English. Furthermore, Black American Sign Language (BASL) developed independently from ASL due to education segregation, though not all Black Deaf signers use BASL. Oralism (an oppressive form of education in which deaf students were forced to prioritize non-signing methods of communication) was not as strongly imposed within Black Deaf schools as it was  within white Deaf schools. Because of this, BASL tends to retain more of ASL’s early signs and linguistic tendencies. According to Victoria Garcia Unzueta, “Just as Black hearing people code-switch between standard English and Black English to fit in in the classroom or among white people, BASL users frequently code-switch between BASL and ASL.”

As culture shifts, so do signed depictions. In ASL, male-gendered signs tend to be signed at the forehead, while female-gendered signs tend to be signed at the chin. In recent years, a growing number of ASL users have begun to sign PARENTS at cheek, whereas the more traditional sign for PARENTS is gendered, using MOTHER (an open hand with thumb on chin) and FATHER (an open hand with thumb on forehead) in quick succession.

Another example of a culture shif  is explained by Amanda Morris, a native signing CODA (child of Deaf adults. According to Morris, the sign for PRIVILEGE used to evoke the image of putting a dollar into a shirt pocket, whereas the newer version of the sign now evokes the image of raising one person above others. This change occurred as a result of the culture shift in which the Deaf community realized they needed a way to indicate privilege as a term related to inherent inequalities that extend beyond financial privilege.

Perhaps because the American Deaf community is much smaller than the global English-speaking community, there tends to be a lot more active discussion around new and improved ways to sign technical innovations, societal shifts and cultural concepts than we are used to seeing in regards to the English language.

Recently, Rach Kay, on Instagram as @suchalovelyred, asked her followers how they sign “gaslighting,” an English term which technically dates back to the 1930s but only came into popular usage in the past five to seven years. Gaslighting someone means to manipulate someone by making them question their own sanity, reality, or belief in their own memory. (In 2016, “gaslight” was voted by the American Dialect Society as the year’s “most useful/most likely to succeed” word.) 

Kay shared the responses she received to the question of how fellow ASL users sign “gaslighting.” Many of the signs had to do with depictions of lighting fires or igniting gas lamps, while the seemingly most favored ones seemed to have more to do with the actual meaning of the word, showing various depictions of pressure, manipulation of the mind and negative persuasion.

In a Facebook group for advanced and native signers, the responses garnered hundreds of likes, shares and comments. The Facebook group, called ASL THAT, is one designated space for these sorts of discussions. Examples of group topics, per the group’s description, include:

  1. Current trends (popular topics, words or phrases in the news),
  2. Variations of signs (national, regional, local, cultural, style, age, race, sex, international, etc.),
  3. Interpretations of English words, phrases, quotes, idioms, and
  4. New and innovative signs (both widely accepted and suggested).

The group description goes on to explain that its goal is “conceptually accurate ASL expression, free of English influence.”

By both the natural, gradual evolution of language and the active discussions among Deaf ASL users, American Sign Language continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace. For this reason, if you want to learn ASL, it is important to learn from a qualified member of the Deaf community.

If an in-person Deaf-led ASL class is not an option, two good free online resources for learning from qualified Deaf instructors include:

American Sign Language is integrated as a cherished and core aspect of Deaf culture. Hearing individuals learning to sign should make a point to also learn about this history and culture.

If your interest in ASL is now piqued and you have a quick 30 seconds to spare, check out this video of the ASL alphabet, and try fingerspelling your name.

When you have 40 minutes to spare, check out Bill Vicars’s full “learn to fingerspell” video, and after that, move onto ASL lesson one.

If you ‘ve found this short(ish) history of ASL interesting, check out the sources used for this article below for a deeper dive into how .

Sources:

History of American Sign Language

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/marthas-vineyard-sign-language-asl/407191/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/26/us/american-sign-language-changes.html

https://projecthbw.ku.edu/uncategorized/black-american-sign-language-basl

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/04/1115758227/how-american-sign-language-is-evolving-with-time

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1187214045005724

https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2016-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

HDI’s Lisa Amstutz is Second in Kentucky to Earn Special Credential for Mental Health ASL Interpreting

Posted on | by Court Cox

Lisa Amstutz earned her Qualified Mental Health Interpreter Certification earlier this month, making her the second American Sign Language interpreter in Kentucky to do so. The credential is part of a crucial effort to bridge the gap between Deaf mental health care needs and barriers to access.

The certification is typically held by experienced interpreters who have already demonstrated particularly high competence in general interpreting. A progeny of Alabama’s Mental Health Interpreting Project, the certification is earned through practicum experience focused on broadening the interpreter’s knowledge of mental health conditions and treatments so that the most effective interpretation can be made in crisis and mental health care settings.

A common misconception about American Sign Language (ASL) is that it is simply English on the hands, when in fact, ASL is a full language with its own grammar, syntax, idioms and means of expression. A question asked in English may need to be altered to make conceptual sense in ASL, and likewise, a sentiment expressed in ASL may need to be altered from a direct translation to hold true to its intended tone in English. Because of this, a qualified ASL interpreter is a non-negotiable requisite to effective mental health care for those who use ASL as their primary language.

An estimated one in five adults in the United States is living with a mental illness, and research repeatedly shows that this rate is significantly higher among Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. A statement from the National Association of the Deaf cites that “mental health disorders for deaf signers, including depression and anxiety, occur at a much higher rate, usually in the magnitude of two times higher than what is typically seen in the hearing population.”

Amstutz explains that one cause of this is related to language deprivation, which occurs when a child is not given full access to language in the first few years of life. Language deprivation has long-term effects on neurological development, affecting the child’s ability to develop language skills needed for fluent communication later in life, oft in turn leading to emotional distress and behavioral health issues.

Over 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, and the vast majority of those parents do not learn sign language. Language deprivation research indicates that assistive hearing devices such (hearing aids and cochlear implants) are “insufficient as a stand-alone approach for language acquisition in deaf children,” sign language is scarcely proposed to parents as a solution for language acquisition.

According to a Boston University article, “The developing brain responds to language no matter how it is presented, so exposure to ASL is equivalent to exposure to a spoken language.” Still, the article goes on, “Perhaps as many as 70 percent [of deaf children] are deprived of language.”

Another major factor affecting the prevalence of mental health conditions among ASL users is the barrier to accessing mental health care at all, along with fears of communication barriers leading to undesirable outcomes such as misdiagnoses or involuntary admission to psychiatric units.

This Verywell Mind article illustrates an example of how a deaf person may pound on the floor to get another person’s attention, which is an accepted action within the Deaf community but may be perceived as aggressive by a hearing person.

According to Amstutz, ASL interpreters are trained to routinely “clean up” one language to make it make sense in the other. But what if, say, the patient is experiencing psychosis, and by cleaning up the language as the interpreter typically would, the clinician in turn misses key indicators of the condition? In mental health interpreting, Amstutz explains, interpreters have a unique role in ensuring the clinician has all information needed to make a diagnosis or set a treatment plan.

“We bear a great responsibility, because we are, a lot of times, the only person in the room that knows something here is not right,” Amstutz said.

Amstutz says her new certification will be helpful in establishing herself as a core part of the ASL user’s care team in settings with other professionals “who have long viewed us as ‘helpers.’”

Amstutz has long demonstrated her passion for mental health care access, even predating her work as an interpreter. When she first began college, she intended to become a child mental health therapist. Later, she realized her best fit as a crucial advocate in mental health as an ASL interpreter.

“Working on this credential has stretched me professionally and is helping me realize a lifelong dream, “Amstutz said. “I’ve worked in mental health settings for most of my 29 years of working as an ASL interpreter, and since my first mental health interpreter training experience in 2018, I knew pursuing the [certification] was something I wanted to do.”

Amstutz is a part of the Kentucky Office of Vocational Rehabilitation ASL Interpreting Team which is employed by the UK Human Development Institute to serve its Deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers.

Please join the Human Development Institute in congratulating Amstutz on her new credential as a Qualified Mental Health Interpreter.

rock formations with bright horizon, with a circular body of bright blue water in the middle, and a tall rock formation in the center or the water

Lifetime access pass to national parks and recreational land offers accessible options to Americans with disabilities  

Posted on | by Court Cox

Spring sunshine continues to taunt summer loving Kentuckians with its promise of the radiant afternoon rays that fade into calm evening glow. It’s a great time to begin making summer plans, and for those with a permanent disability, you might consider applying for a free lifetime access pass to all U.S. national parks and recreational lands. 

The pass covers entrance fees and standard amenity fees at all federal recreation sites for the entire car of anyone with a permanent disability (at locations that charge by vehicle) or for the passholder and up to three guests (at locations that charge per person). The pass is valid for day use only (no camping permits) and does not cover expanded amenities, such as guided tours, boat launching or parking. 

The access pass can be acquired for free on-site at nearly any federal recreation site or, with a $10 processing fee, ordered online or by mail. When applying in-person, it is advisable to contact the site ahead of time to ensure the pass availability. Application materials include proof of U.S. citizenship or permanent residency and documentation of permanent disability.  

Accepted documentation includes proof of permanent physical, cognitive or sensory disability in the form of a signed letter from a physician, a document issued by a federal agency (such as the Department of Veterans Affairs or proof of Social Security Disability Income) or a document issued by a state agency (such as a vocational rehabilitation agency).  You can acquire an access pass in-person at any one of Kentucky’s 22 federal recreation sites.  

Sunset horizon with bare rock formations
Half Dome, Yosemite National Park

While the access pass grants entrance into all national recreational sites, it does not come with the accessibility guides needed by many of its users. Searching for accessibility information when planning a trip can be tedious, and not every federal agency makes the information as easily accessible as others. Locations managed by the National Parks Service (NPS) tend to have clear and thorough accessibility information. Read about the history of the NPS and accessibility, the concluding article of the agency’s Disability History series. 

Kentuckians boast claim to Mammoth Cave, one of the nation’s 63 national parks, though you won’t necessarily benefit from your access pass at this location, since park entry is free to all, and the access pass does not waive guided tour fees. Still, if you are not looking to travel further to places such as the Badlands, Grand Canyon, Yosemite or Zion National Parks (where there are, in fact, entrance fees to be waived by the access pass), look into the accessible activities available at Mammoth Cave, such as the aptly named the “Accessible Tour.”  

Rock formations in Mammoth Cave with a purple backlit glow
Mammoth Cave rock formations

In the Accessible Tour, visitors meet at the entrance of the visitor center and then follow a tour guide by personal vehicle directly to the entrance of the cave, where they descend via elevator into the Snowball Room–a dining area located 267 feet underground, named for the snowball-shaped calcium carbonate formations on the ceiling. There begins a two-hour journey through unique gypsum formations and curious cave writing on a route “expressly created for visitors with mobility devices such as motorized wheelchairs or walkers.” 

The Accessible Tour is not the only accessible portion of Mammoth Cave’s infrastructure. Broken down by category to be applicable to the needs of various disability types (physical/mobility, Deaf/hearing loss, blind/low vision and cognitive/learning), a full accessibility overview of Mammoth Cave can be found here. 

Other accessible recreational sites of note in Kentucky include Land Between the Lake’s, Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace and Big South Fork. Of Kentucky’s 22 recreational land sites, the following is a list of each that has a webpage with clear accessibility notes. The name of the location links to the location’s general web page, and the sub-lists describe accessibility notes or link to dedicated accessibility pages. 

Accessible Federal Recreation Sites in Kentucky 

  1. Abraham Lincoln Birthplace (Hodgenville, KY) 
  1. Barren River Lake (Glasgow, KY) 
    • Accessibility information included in dropdown menu about halfway down page  
  2. Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area (Stearns, KY)
  3. Daniel Boone National Forest (main office in Winchester, KY) 
  4. Lake Barkley (Grand Rivers, KY) 
    • No dedicated accessibility page found.
    • Main site states that Canal Campground has accessible restrooms and shower house.
  5.  Land Between the Lakes (Golden Pond, KY) 
  6. Mammoth Cave National Park (Mammoth Cave, KY) 

To share additional information related to the accessibility of federal recreation sites in Kentucky, please email Beth Potter at beth.potter@uky.edu. The above list may be updated accordingly. 

Illustration of lips followed by text: "Can you read my lips?" Here's what you should know before you ask.

“Can You Read My Lips?” Ten Things to Know Before You Ask

Posted on | by Court Cox

Lip reading is a communication technique in which a person who does not have full access to sound closely watches the mouth of a speaker to understand speech. It is a skill which requires practice and, sometimes, formal training.  

In an essay, “Seeing at the Speed of Sound,” Rachel Kolb describes lip reading as “a skill of trying to grasp with one sense the information that was intended for another,” calling it “inherently tenuous.” View the visual adaptation of the essay here. 

Not every d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing person is able to and willing to read lips, but if you find yourself in conversation with a person who is reading yours, here are ten things you should know: 

  1. Only about 40% of sounds in the English language can be read on the lips. Lip reading is a communication technique that works best when combined with residual hearing or another communication tool such as cued speech or assistive hearing devices. On its own, lip reading does not give full language access–even to the world’s best lip readers. 
  1. The following sounds are visually indistinguishable from each other, meaning a lip reader cannot tell the difference by sight alone: 
  • B and P
  • M, N, and NG 
  • W and R 
  • TH and T 
  • CH and J 
  1. Lip readers rely heavily on context. A native English speaker anticipates common word pairings, filling in missed words and non-lip readable speech. 
  • For example, although “barks” and “parks” may look the same on the lips, if the conversation is about a dog, a lip reader might assume that the dog does not park; the dog barks, and likewise, the dog’s tail is wagging, not ragging. And still, the larger context matters, because what if we are talking about the dog park? 
  • Anticipated word groups are another form of context. When you run into someone you know, even if a lip reader does not catch every lip movement, if one word from “how are you?” is read on the lips, it may be possible to fill in the blanks with situational context.  
  1. Don’t try to emphasize your mouth movements. Individuals who lip read will likely have learned to do so by observing natural speech. You are likely to make lip reading more difficult by deviating from your natural speech patterns. 
  1. Likewise, keep to a natural pace–don’t slow your speech, and don’t rush your speech. Consider asking the person you are speaking to if your pace is okay. 
  1. Lip reading is easier and more accurate in well-lit rooms, without background noise, and with the speaker close to and facing toward the person who is lip reading. Be mindful that lip reading may be more difficult on a small screen, such as in a Zoom call. 
  1. Beards and mustaches hinder lip reading, sometimes rendering it impossible. If you keep facial hair, work to identify other communication methods you can use with a person who reads lips. A good place to start is by offering pen and paper. The communication preferences are highly individualized, so do not assume that one d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing person’s preference will be the same as another. 
  1. Lip reading is tiring. It requires great mental energy to piece together fragments and context to follow a conversation. Never assume a person is willing to lip read, even if they have done so in the past. If you have regular contact with a person who relies on lip reading, check in with them. Ask if they need breaks, if there is a different communication method they would prefer, and if there is anything you can do to make yourself easier to understand. 
  1. In important and jargon-intensive settings such as medical appointments and legal proceedings, a more reliable communication system must be arranged, personalized to the individual’s needs (unless the person reading lips has explicitly stated they do not want alternative arrangements). A person with a fragmented understanding of what they have been told cannot give medical or legal consent. 
  1. d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals–especially those who use sign language as a primary communication method–accommodate the world around them by reading lips. You should work to avoid expressing frustration if someone does not understand you or needs you to repeat yourself multiple times. Do not take the effort and the concentration required to read your lips for granted. If you communicate often with a person who prefers to sign, consider learning sign language so that your conversations are not limited to the 40% of sounds that can be seen on your lips.  

Sources 

Hearing Link: How to Lip Read

CDC: Parent’s Guide to Hearing Loss

Rear view of a man on wheelchair at airport with his luggage.

UK HDI researchers lay groundwork for national air travel accessibility research with focus on individuals who use wheelchairs 

Posted on | by Court Cox

In July 2021, Engracia Figueroa’s power wheelchair–a $30,000 custom device—was critically damaged in the belly of a commercial plane. After the flight, Figueroa was left to wait in a standard transport wheelchair at the airport for nearly five hours, noting her hunger and pain in live videos she posted to Facebook. 

 Figueroa, who was disabled following a train accident 30 years prior, was provided with a temporary and ill-fitting loaner wheelchair to use in the coming months, as United Airlines fought against the federally mandated responsibility to pay for full repairs or replacement. In Facebook videos, Figueroa described the incident as life ruining.  

In the wheelchair Figueroa was left to use, an old pressure ulcer opened, leading to an infection that spread through her body, ultimately causing her death just three months after her wheelchair had been destroyed due to improper cargo storage. 

Two researchers at the UK Human Development Institute (HDI), Dr. Walt Bower and Julie Pfeiffer, have been paying attention to stories like Figueroa’s, and they are now laying the groundwork for academic research on airline accessibility for individuals who use wheelchairs.  

“Please do not allow this to happen to anyone else again. Let’s get together and get these airlines to stop doing this to people with disabilities,” Figueroa wrote in a Facebook post following the initial incident.  

Revealing the prevalence of the issue, Bower and Pfeiffer note that disability-related complaints related to air travel have more than doubled in the past decade, yet little to no formal academic research has been conducted on the topic in the U.S.  

Pfeiffer, who came to HDI with this specific research interest, is a graduate research assistant with a background in physical therapy. She used to work with individuals who were new to using a wheelchair. One facility she worked in had a partnership with the local airport. Using a mock airplane setup, Pfeiffer helped her patients practice transfers from their wheelchairs to airplane seats. She educated her patients on how to navigate an airport in a wheelchair, passing along tips and tricks she had learned from other wheelchair users.  

“I continued to work with individuals who used wheelchairs and just started hearing a lot of stories from my patients about what it was like for them trying to travel–trying to fly on a plane, specifically–as a wheelchair user and having their wheelchair damaged, how they were treated by airline personnel, how they talked to them,” Pfeiffer said. 

Joe Cowan, a member of HDI’s Consumer Advisory Council, loves to travel for conferences and events. His favorite place he’s traveled to is Florida.  

“It was just the atmosphere, you know? It was just nice,” he said. 

Cowan hopes the outcome of Bower’s and Pfeiffer’s research will lead to better training for airport staff. He sees lack of training and awareness by airline staff as the biggest reason individuals who use wheelchairs run into so many problems in the airport. 

In a recent travel experience, Cowan was told his wheelchair wouldn’t fit in the belly of the plane, and he would likely need to take a different flight. 

“That didn’t sit well with me,” Cowan said. “That should not happen. They should be able to transport me and my chair. Just because I have a disability, they shouldn’t say, you know, you have to use a special plane, or you have to do this. If I pay my money and come to the gate… my chair should be able to come along as well.” 

Though the airline did eventually fit his wheelchair onto the plane, it sustained damage to its right armrest in flight.  

According to Cowan, some individuals who use custom wheelchairs might use backup wheelchairs that are not as comfortable or suitable for regular use, anticipating the damage the wheelchair will receive in air travel. Cowan says some of his friends who use wheelchairs choose not to take part in air travel at all due to the issue. 

Bower, preservice training coordinator at HDI, points out that the current air travel experience stands in conflict with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

“ADA asserts disability is a natural part of the human experience. That does not diminish a person’s right to participate in all aspects of life, including transportation and air travel,” he says. 

Bower says that federal legislation has existed to improve accessibility during air travel for over 30 years, yet disability-related complaints continue to increase, rising from about 14,000 to 37,000 annual complaints from 2009-2019. 

Bower and Pfeiffer both pointed out that there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence to support their efforts. Social media holds countless stories of damaged wheelchairs and accounts of discrimination against travelers who use them, yet there is a stark lack of academic research to drive policy change. 

Bower and Pfeiffer are interviewing individuals who use wheelchairs to gain insight into their experiences. They will collect and document experiences and perceptions on what needs to change to make the air travel process more accessible. 

For questions about this research, please contact walt.bower@uky.edu.