Kansas Deaf Community Pushes For Access To Information, Education Amid Pandemic

By Noah Taborda, The Kansas Reflector

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Aug. 24, 2020

Allison Gile has spent 28 years in classrooms, research institutions and legal settings providing vital information to the Kansas deaf community.

Now, the American Sign Language interpreter is known for her work alongside Gov. Laura Kelly and Kansas Department of Health and Environment secretary Lee Norman during frequent briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Seeing all of the disadvantages that the deaf community has experienced over generations of fighting for access makes me want to be the best interpreter I can be,” Gile said. “I want to provide access to them so that they have all the rights and privileges anyone else would.”

For the deaf and hard of hearing, nationwide and in Kansas, access to information, education and language is a chief concern, especially amid a deadly pandemic with frequently evolving information.

Earlier this month, the National Association of the Deaf filed a lawsuit to compel the White House and President Donald Trump to begin using ASL interpretation during his briefings. All 50 states have provided ASL translators, the lawsuit said.

While live captions are available during some broadcasts, they often are an inaccurate and insufficient solution. Many in the deaf community learn ASL, not English, as their first language. Great interpreters ease the process.

ASL interpreters around the country have gained widespread attention for their work. In 2019, David Cowan, an interpreter who worked with the late John Lewis, went viral for “outshining Beyoncé” during a pride parade.

With so much focus on her profession, Gile is shifting the spotlight from herself.

“Really, who am I? I don’t suffer through these issues,” Gile said. “No, I’m just the one that you see on your computer. I just want to give back for the trust put in me by the deaf community in Kansas.”

As of 2016, there are approximately 242,000 people in Kansas with hearing loss. Of those, about 25,000 are deaf and sign fluently, according to the Hearing Loss Association of America.

The Kansas Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing represents this community. Charged with advocating for and facilitating equal access to services that deaf Kansans may need, the commission drafts policies and testifies on behalf of increased accessibility.

“A lot of doors are shut, and we are banging at those doors trying to get the information on the other side,” said Robert Cooper, executive director of the commission. “Then, when the doors do open, we’ve only been given partial access to what we need.”

Advocates for the deaf often use the analogy of a fence with a short man and tall man standing next to each other. The tall man can see over the fence, but the short man can’t unless he has a box to stand on.

In this analogy, providing a box is like providing captions. From Cooper’s point of view, we should break down the fence altogether.

Amid COVID-19, Cooper, who is deaf and has deaf family members spanning generations, has seen some signs of improvement. The migration of day-to-day business and academics to the virtual world has opened up new opportunities for communication.

“All of a sudden people are like, ‘Oh, yeah, you need access now too,’ and we see more captions and interpreters in these online meetings,” Cooper said. “What they don’t realize is its always been an issue, this pandemic just focused it for them.”

The pandemic also exposed a need for more qualified interpreters. And Cooper is concerned after people resume more face-to-face interaction, the effort may fall off.

“Humans are social animals. What’s the point if we are cut off from socializing?” Cooper said.

Educating the deaf and hard of hearing

In September, students will return to class at the Kansas School for the Deaf with the option of virtual or face-to-face learning.

KSD works with about 1,200 deaf students in Kansas, said superintendent Luanne Barron. Of those, about 150 come from across the state and attend on campus.

Barron, a third-generation Deaf, has been preparing for the challenges that come with educating deaf children in the age of COVID-19.

“Deaf and hard of hearing children have just as much a right to a rigorous curriculum of instruction as anyone else,” Barron said.

At KSD, students have equal access to education in both ASL and English, making sure they account for each student’s language needs.

Barron’s primary concern for in-person classes is that masks will cut students off from parts of both languages.

“People often think it’s just the lips we are reading, but really ASL is a language that picks up on so many full-body language cues,” Barron said. “With a mask covering your nose and mouth, you lose more than half of those markers for the language.”

The school has experimented with a variety of masks — window masks with see-through areas and fully clear masks among them — to ease the process.

Those not on the KSD campus may not have to worry about masks, but virtual learning poses its own set of problems for hard of hearing students.

“There is so much incidental learning that happens visually, that is signed or communicated, and you lose that when you are only on Zoom for class time,” Barron said.

It is the same for deaf children at some public schools where interpreters are only provided for academics, Barron said. During recess or just walking in the hallways, deaf students miss out on those teaching moments.

To ease the process for these students, Barron regularly interacts with school districts across the state of Kansas, disseminating critical information and helping schools provide equal access to their deaf and hard of hearing students.

Still, she knows deaf students in some school districts will be left unrepresented and adrift.

“It hurts me to think about those that are slipping through the cracks because I know not every school district has an interpreter for their area,” Barron said. “It’s so important for deaf students to adjust to interpreters because they will be using them in so many settings later in life.”

Educating the interpreters

Beyond educational and political settings, interpreters play vital roles in medical and legal affairs.

There are currently not enough qualified interpreters with the required knowledge of technical terms to interpret in a courtroom or a doctor’s office. In K-12 education, most interpreters provided are mid-level — about a 60% accuracy rate.

“That means students will miss out on some of the lessons, and the teacher will think the deaf kid is stupid when that is not the case,” said Petra Horn-Marsh, a professor of practice in ASL and Deaf studies at the University of Kansas Edwards Campus.

Horn-Marsh and coworker Stacey Storme taught in a two-year, ASL-English interpreter program at Johnson County Community College before expanding the program to the KU Edwards Campus as a four-year bachelor’s degree in 2019.

“People used to think they could just learn ASL and be interpreters in two years, but that isn’t true,” Storme said. “You need to have a strong base of English, a deep understanding of ASL, and appreciation for the deaf community culture before talking about interpreting.”

The first two years are spent working on acquiring a basic understanding of social language like, “How are you?” and, “Are you OK?” — things one might say in day-to-day life. In the following years, students learn more academic language.

Students not only take classes on the deaf community but are expected to immerse themselves in and interact with deaf culture. The more they communicate with deaf people outside of the classroom, the further they expand their understanding of the nuances in ASL, Horn-Marsh said.

Once students have a strong cultural and language base, then they reach the point you can talk about interpreting, cognitive processing, Storme said.

“At a minimum to be a qualified interpreter, you need English fluency, cultural competency, understanding of the nuances of ASL, world knowledge and certainly professional skills,” said Storme, who has taught for more than 20 years.

To move beyond a qualified interpreter to a great interpreter requires years spent in the deaf community. It requires strong cognitive skills, taking in all the English and delivering it back in ASL, and vice versa, with more than 90% accuracy.

Great interpreters also maintain self-awareness and good ethics, to keep from accidentally allowing their own emotions to leak into the interpretation.

“Access is not easy. You can’t just put a warm body who can sign alright at the front of a classroom or in a briefing,” Storme said. “Interpreters play an integral role in access, and there’s a lot of trust from the deaf community in that process.”

The Kansas Reflector seeks to increase people's awareness of how decisions made by elected representatives and other public servants affect our day-to-day lives. We hope to empower and inspire greater participation in democracy throughout Kansas.