A place to start - Disability Lawyers

I am now asking you, as a community, to help me point a direction where I can look for more information on how I could go about becoming a specialized lawyer for people with disabilities. After Art History II class today, my teacher asked me to come and talk with her about various topics and one of them was about captioning in educational videos.

I am sure how many of us who are tired of schools not supplying with adequate  captioning. In this class, we use a lot of videos, and only a small number of them are captioned. I even admitted to her that I doze off slightly because I could not follow at all (which she was alarmed at.) So, today, she said to look into trying to get educational videos to be mandated that all videos must be captioned, no matter how old it is. She also said that it is a big business, which I don’t doubt, looking at how expensive it is to hire a stenographer for CART.

So, that got me thinking, I knew how many of us with many types of disabilities struggle on a daily basis, be it in education or in work  place and general day to day like Karen’s run in with the Steak n’ Shake.  And more than ever, I want a sense of justice being done for all people with disabilities, we cannot be mistreated, downtroddened, oppressed, or any other kind of action done to us, either for saving their own money, their bias, past experiences, and so on.

And so, I literally have no idea where to start looking for education in getting specialized lawyer and how well they are doing. Is there a growing demand or are people turning their heads away from disabled people? Or are we doing much better than what it was ten years ago, thus the need for disability lawyers is decreased (though, I can’t imagine that they’d ever go away because of people’s bias).

I even tried googling, and there’s so much to wade through, which is why I have come to you guys for any pointers to direct me in the right direction. Any website dealing with this type of lawyer and its resources would be wonderful. I am about to make a major Major change based on this information in my life and I would like to know as much as possible to see if this is for me. smile

Rini

Communication Breakdown - painting

I’ve been meaning to share this with everyone here on DeafRead, but for one reason or another, I didn’t until now. I started painting this piece on Dec. 12th, 2007, went on hiatus for almost two weeks  because I went to Michigan and then on Jan 3rd, 2008, it was completed. At first, I had different ideas and wasn’t sure which one to settle on and I finally decided on “Communication Breakdown” as a theme for this painting.

Far different than my original idea where the original idea was that both sides were the same person, trapped within themselves, trying to perceive which one of themselves is cleaner–sin nature wise.

This painting was done all in acrylic. Probably took me about 20 hours to complete the painting which is on the canvas of 20 by 24 inches. Used masking tape for the background, hence why the lines are so sharp. I wanted to experiment with the masking tape since I was suspicious of their use. I love them now. The one thing I love about the painting is her hand, signing the letter A in American Sign Language. It came out really well, thanks to my friend’s suggestion of studying hands. Actually, I went almost on a whim (outlined with light blue paint) and without references except for my own hand since I originally didn’t have her signing.

But because I grew interested in Deaf Community when I returned from Michigan, and I wanted to make the lines of reality apparent to show how they are on different levels of communicating. I leave the rest of the interpretation up to you and decide for yourself, after all, multiple meanings of a single painting is marked as a good artist. Or so I hope I achieved that.
 Painting

Clicking on the link will open in the current window. Once you are in the gallery, just click on the image to make it bigger.

Hard of Hearing culture? Hah!

Sorry if the title sounds offensive to some, but I mean no offense. I have many thoughts that are going million miles a minute and I can’t sleep. I suddenly remembered reading about how hard of hearing people kick themselves in the rear when there is a communication break down. I couldn’t agree with the statement more when I first read that sentence. I then remembered how my attempts to make myself loud and clear in things I need, is failing and falling apart (I am getting an appeal, however, so that is sure to boost my self-esteem.)

Hard of hearings depend heavily on devices, and trying to learn or re-learn how to speak and lipread as well as listening (probably the most difficult), and all the stuff we have to learn in order to be successful in the Hearing world. I got angry when the captioning for House tonight was not shown because of the primary results about the election was being shown once awhile. When the election primary results did come up, the captioning stops. I don’t give a frack about the results of the primary until after the show is over. Not to mention that the captioning stopped for a full minute when the primary results did show up at the bottom of the screen, thus, making me miss out some of the plot that is happening that I wanted to know.

While this would have affected everyone in the Deaf World, HoH and Deaf alike, it only served me as a reminder that I can’t fully comprehend the speech of the television, no matter how successful I appear to be as a HoH person.

HoH President Now! scenario would never happen, because HoH people is an invisible group, (after all, there is no such thing as HoH Culture) only making ourselves heard when we cannot understand what the other person is saying.  And that, sometimes, makes us even more less sure of ourselves because we are taught that to be anything less than a hearing person, is defective. Which sure raise our self-esteem by leap and bounds. /sarcasm

If I really did have a half a penny for every time I kicked myself in the rear for any type of miscommunication break down, I would surely be a millionaire by now. My self-esteem is low right now, and I don’t know what to do at this point (besides appealing to get CART services as FM system is not working). My life is quite literally a blank road after this semester ends and the prospects are frightening and not having gained any self-esteem by the semester’s end in making myself heard without sounding like a bitch, well, I’m not sure what I can do.

Looking and sounding like a bitch is one of the last thing I want to do. So I never speak up for things I really need. My note taker in Art History ceased and I really want to tell her to continue taking it for me because I found out that the ‘rough draft’ paper is supposed to be an outline form… augh, but at least I’m really communicating with the teacher for anything I missed and is willing to overlook the actual rough draft and not outline. But it’s still stressful for not knowing what’s going on in the classroom. And I don’t want to approach the note taker to tell her that I still need the notes and appear bitchy because she doesn’t want to do the work.

I really keep to myself too much at school, I rarely interact and when I do, it’s during art, but even then, it’s only a hi and a few casual words like “what’s up?” I badly want to interact, but I don’t want any communication break down and keep kicking myself in the rear. The fear of communication break down prevents me from interacting with anyone, and that really, really gets me down on most days because in the end, I don’t have anyone to hang out when school is not in session.

 I tried joining tournaments and clubs last semester, but to no avail because of my fear of communication break down. I thought, this is not fair, why am I stuck with this situation? I didn’t really understand why, but somehow, I kept trusting God to help me stay strong. I have remained strong ‘til now. I want to cry out at this unfairness of being a hard of hearing person, even though I literally can’t hear a sound of a gun shot or fireworks when my CI is off. I’m not hearing anything right now because I am supposed to be sleeping now.

 All of this makes me realize how hard it is for everyone else with an hearing loss and who try to be in the Hearing world without knowing or avoiding the Deaf Culture. I will admit, I love my CI so much that I seriously considered being an audiologist for CI and being an advocate. Back then I was living in the bliss of ignorance, not knowing an iota of the Deaf Culture. I thought that deafness was seriously something to be cured with and that everyone wanted to hear sounds. I couldn’t even imagine anyone not wanting to hear (but now I kind of understand why some don’t.) That was me about three years ago now, not very long ago, was it?

And today… my thoughts about being an HoH person and how I deal with being as such is falling apart. I’ve stated in the past blogs that I’m sick of how I was dealing with things as a HoH person, but I hadn’t fully comprehended what it was doing to my self-esteem–yet, I did have some ideas what was happening to my self-esteem. I knew I was down sometimes, but I didn’t realize the full depth of how much it was personally affecting and hurting me. When I went to the Orlando retreat for the Deaf/Blind, I realized how outgoing I really was, or rather, remembered, and now that I am back and it’s been a week and half since then. Because of that, I remembered of who I really was, it really had me feeling down. 

Sure, I can interact freely one on one, provided that there is no background noise, and that the person has good voice for me to hear. My success as a ‘hearing’ person is pretty high and can fool anyone into thinking that I am not deaf once getting a job. Not so sure about afterwards though… And that’s where the line crosses and my confidence is lowered.

 

I really wish such a world or even a country, is mainly made of deaf people. (link)

 

This post was inspired by Deaf Culture Website: HoH