Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

Karen Putz continues her fight after being denied service at her local Steak & Shake drive-thru because she is Deaf. FOX News aired her story late last night. Ironically, the online video is not captioned and a transcript isn’t provided, making it inaccessible to people who are Deaf and hearing impaired, as well as those who’d rather read the story for various reasons.

Is Heaven accessible?

Yesterday Karen was denied service at her local Steak & Shake because she is Deaf. Today she was interviewed by two tv stations. Here is the ABC interview. Don’t deny a woman her milkshake!

I’m proud of you, my friend!

Ironically, two days after Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, my friend Karen Putz (aka DeafMom) was denied service because of her disability, her deafness. After picking up one child at one school and before picking up the next, she decided to treat her son and herself to milkshake at her local Steak & Shake drive-thru. Because she drove up to the window to place her order, rather than placing it at the speaker, which she can’t hear, the guy refused to serve her, even after she explained she is Deaf and requires accommodation as legislated in the Americans with Disabilities Act. He still refused to serve her.

Karen has contacted the corporate office and a lawyer. Tonight, with a crash course, she has set up a Twitter account where she plans to share updates on her fight for her rights. Please join our Viral Activism in Action!

Perhaps appropriately Do It Myself Blog has advanced to round two of the Canadian Blog Awards, in the Best Activism Category. Voting is now open until January 30th, 2008 11:59 PM PST. Thanks for your support!

From age two to ninety-two, we all know these fun lyrics:

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
had a very shiny nose.
And if you ever saw him,
you would even say it glows.

All of the other reindeer
used to laugh and call him names.
They never let poor Rudolph
join in any reindeer games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say:
“Rudolph with your nose so bright,
won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”

Then all the reindeer loved him
as they shouted out with glee,
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,
you’ll go down in history!

But, how many of us see the valuable lesson here?

Rudolph is teased and ostracized because he is different. He is excluded from reindeer games for the sole reason that his nose glows bright red. How heartbreaking is that?

In the classic Christmas special, a dejected Rudolph and his elf friend, mocked for his dream of becoming a dentist, head out to find a place of acceptance and happen across the Island of Misfit Toys; segregation at its finest.

It takes the fog to come down for the big guy (possibly the employer) Santa to realize the value in a bright, shiny nose. And that’s the point when Rudolph is duly recognized for his unique ability, giving us the Christmas story that we know and love.

But this story leaves me thinking about the other parts of the story – the bits that didn’t make it to the song. I am left wondering how many other reindeer before Rudolph were discarded because their unique ability or talent wasn’t valued. However, I am comforted in believing that discriminating practice will not be repeated when Rudolph and his reindeer friends retire and new flying reindeer are chosen to pull the sleigh. After all, believing everyone is welcomed and accepted is part of the magic of Christmas!

Rudolph teaches children young and old about the importance of valuing diversity and inclusion. Without this reindeer’s different coloured nose, Christmas was surely doomed to be cancelled that foggy night. With him, that lesson went down in history!

A couple of years ago I challenged the “functionally non-verbal” label placed upon me by medical experts by giving my first ever speech. Since then I have given a few more presentations. My head still bobs for invisible apples, but, for the most part, I have accepted it as another quirk of my cerebral palsy. Some people become a red lobster when they speak publicly; I become a head bobble.

Up until now the content has been prepared ahead of time, so giving my presentation meant hitting a few buttons on my laptop. This weekend I was at a strategic planning session as a Board member for the Social Planning and Research Council for British Columbia (SPARC BC) and had the opportunity to take the next step with my public verbalizing.

For the first exercise, the facilitator had each of us share our top short-term priorities for the organization. Thankfully he wanted us to succinctly phrase our idea in five words, and, thankfully, he started at the other side of the table. Using my new roll-up keyboard plugged into my small Toshiba Libretto, I was able to plunk out my five words by the time it was my turn. Taking a deep breath because I hadn’t used this particular software live before (what NOT to do!), I hit the “speak” button in the NextUp Talker trial version and my words were shared with the group.

We went around the table again and again; each time I was able to keep up and offer my thoughts. Had the group been smaller or had the facilitator wanted a detailed explanation, I may not have been able to type my thoughts fast enough. Thanks to the technology, this was the first time in my life that I was able to offer my own thoughts in this kind of group setting. I did not have to pass this time like I had done every other time, even though ideas and thoughts were no doubt zinging around my head.

But, because this was the first time, I found myself self-censoring a lot. Was that idea good enough? Was that really what the facilitator was looking for? Maybe it was too general or too specific? It is one thing to have the technology to be able to communicate in this fashion, but having the confidence that one’s ideas are good enough to share with a group is something else; something that takes as much practice as learning the technology, something that I’m not sure is realized when individuals are taught how to use augmentative communication devices.

The second exercise was to discuss specific topics in small groups. Once again I was able to contribute a few thoughts in an abbreviated format; I would have liked to offer more expanded thoughts, but it was more than I had been able to offer in the past. It was definitely a step forward.

However, with the small group, timing was much more of a factor. By the time I plunked a response to a thought someone had put forth a moment ago, the rest of the group was already ten thoughts ahead, so my contribution felt rather disjointed and out of sync.

Through this journey of coming out of the silence, I’m seeing how verbal communication is really situation-dependent and there are subtle differences that many people may not even realize. But, going from the written word to the spoken word, I am picking up on these differences and am still figuring out how to mold the technology to fit the situation.

One addition to the technology that would help somewhat is to have the word prediction/completion feature of EZ Keys software that I have on my desktop computer. This feature saves me a bit of typing, and hence, slightly speeds up my output. This means I may be able to type a longer response per contribution.

To have EZ Keys work on my laptop, I would need to move the softkey – the hardware that enables the software to work – from my desktop to my laptop each time I head out with my laptop; a hassle but doable. Another option is to buy another EZ Keys license with the softkey for $695US to use on my laptop in conjunction with NextUp Talker, which is $100US. Alternatively, EZ Keys also has a text-to-speech feature, which I didn’t purchase the first time around because I didn’t envision doing what I am doing now. The complete EZ Keys package with voice is $1395US. I understand this is a business and I definitely don’t want charity, but I feel my voice is being held hostage for a ransom I cannot afford at the moment.

With my husband’s support and insistence that I have the tools that I need, we have purchased the laptop, the speakers, and the roll-up keyboard. Now I need another piece? It’s frustrating that I need something so cumbersome and expensive in order to do what most people take for granted: communicate verbally.

But, I know Darrell and I will find a solution because that is what we are good at. And, in time, I will be giving presentations complete with Q&A sessions, even though my responses may not be as well-thought out or elaborate as they would be had I been using my comfy written word.