Empowering the Hearing Impaired Community

In the employment sector, which are the organizations who have opened up their spaces for adults with deafness in our country?

If I look back 19-20 years ago, there wasn’t, there wasn’t really anybody but today there are coffee chains, all the five-star hotels that you can think of across the country have seen the value of hiring deaf people.

Of hiring deaf people and seeing not, not as a charitable model.

They’re looking at them as productive employees for certain job roles and they’re getting loyal people, hard-working people, so it is also bringing equity and equality into the market.

For example, the ITC group of hotels, the Taj hotels and even the Leela, you know, stand-alone hotels like the Shangri-La, Eros hotels and the Leela Kempinski, they’ve opened their doors over time.

When we started off, you know, you know, employing people in a small batch and then took it a step forward so that they could get first a flavor of working with deaf people.

The environment became inclusive, they were open to a diverse workplace and that’s how it grew over the last years and retail…Shoppers Stop.

You go into any mall, most of the large retail stores, Shoppers Stop, Pantaloons, Starbucks even are open to hiring.

In fact they reach out and say, you know, ‘we’ve got an opening for a barista or we have an opening for a sales representative on the floors’ so that is a wonderful change to see, yes, and that’s happening.

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Can you speak about the process of hiring deaf persons in an organization?

So we have a process, uh, a livelihood process that we follow.

A, one, at the center itself, where we train, as I was telling you earlier, we train the youth specifically for job roles mapped for them.

And we do a pre-test to gauge their inherent interest areas, that’s one.

For…to get them into the employment, first we have to do job mapping.

Go in and see where are the roles, what are the roles and we’ve opened up so many different kinds of roles, you know, because otherwise it’s a fixed thing or they will be working only in retail or in hospitality, unless you go, have a deep understanding of what deaf people are capable of, so many new roles come up.

So we do the job mapping and then we do the sensitization sessions.

It’s critical, because people on the floors who will be working with deaf people need to understand that deaf people are not dumb.

You know, the typical mindsets that you find, they’re disabled, they’re deaf and dumb.

You know, what is the…what is he…how will they work?

So we have to also sensitize them and make them understand that it is a, it’s a business strategy of the organization and that it is, the change is trickling top down.

So that is a must.

And we do orientation to Sign Language.

It’s not so…rocket science, absolutely.

And I say this openly.

40 – 50 contextual words, job related words.

40 – 50 signed words is good enough to start off a team to work effectively with deaf people.

And then, we conduct the, we make the interviews accessible so it’s not just we are taking some candidates and saying ‘please employ them’, we go through a proper HR process.

The interviews are made accessible through the Sign language…through our interpreters and then on-the-job trainings are done, we follow the buddy system where a buddy raises his hand from the company and in his up-first point of contact with us, and then we do refresher trainings because as you said correctly, communication is a challenge, so once the Buddy and the team starts gelling, there are always some little communication gaps, it happens with even non-deaf people, so then we do hand-hold for uh, for a while.

So employing one deaf person is like putting in the efforts of 10 people, so it takes, it’s a time-consuming process, yeah.

Well, all our training programs are geared to get them into employment opportunities or self-employment.

So, we have digital literacy, computer-based literacy, you know, and of course the low-hanging fruits of retail hospitality, you know, where employment is very high and of course reading-writing.

Reading, writing, English communication.

Some kids who don’t even have Sign Language as a language, we teach them also Sign Language and mobile repair and beauty…beauty culture.

And we’re going to be starting a bakery class as well, a course as well.

So everything is geared to take them into the mainstream and provide income.

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What type of jobs do deaf individuals work in?

Well, they’re uh, they’re working uh, in the IT and IT enabled services, they’re working in processes, they’re working, of course manufacturing is very easy because that’s visual work.

They’re working, yes, in retail.

But retail not…nice part is, they may join as sales representative associate on the floors but many are now progressing to become cashiers.

Can you imagine a person who cannot hear and speak and when people go get their clothes on the counter at a retail outlet and suddenly finds that his cashier is a person who cannot hear and speak?

So there and you know so it’s all in the head so there are a lot of roles that they are fulfilling now, path breaking roles.

And even retail in a café, there was one deaf person who became the store manager of a coffee outlet.

I mean, so there is hope, there is opportunity but I think a lot of background work, training has to be very good, both sides, both for the company and for the deaf person, wherever he or she is coming from, yeah.

(Employee says something in Sign Language)

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Could you share the philosophy on which your school was founded?

Oh well, the philosophy is um, every child deserves to have real access to education in the language that the child is comfortable with and understands.

It’s a very simple philosophy, so we, we’ve just gone back to using Sign Language.

It’s non-intrusive, it does not traumatize the child.

For the child to understand – Ma Pa Ba – phonetics is so difficult.

Often you spend years trying to make the child understand just the sounds of certain alphabets and words.

We’ve taken it all around and said ‘okay there’s a language’, India is full of over two hundred twenty two proper languages and so many other dialects.

Why can’t there be another language which is can…which is being used, which is being used effectively by so many lakhs of deaf people?

So we use Indian Sign Language.

(A student using Sign Language)

They want to know about Sign Language.

How do we study?

How do other people on wheelchair work?

People who are blind…that all of us are the same.

We don’t want any difference.

We must be together.

And whether you’re deaf or whether you’re on the wheelchair user, this is what I want, that we shouldn’t be, you know, pushed away on the mainstream and we must all be together as one, as one.

So the philosophy is, it’s called Bilingual education.

We give language foundation to our children, very much like us, when I was in school, when I was three and a half years old, I knew Hindi and English.

I had language.

I could understand my teacher.

So for our children, we giving them Sign Language, how do we do that?

We use deaf trainers.

It’s very important that deaf children have role models to look up to.

I mean they do look up to us, they think, you know, you’re lucky, you can hear, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got all access to every kind of learning knowledge and learning.

They must be with a deaf adult.

And the deaf adult also understands because he or she has possibly gone through years of schooling, whatever it may be and is able to understand the finer nuances.

So language first through a deaf trainer, Indian Sign Language, visual classroom, everything that you can think of is visual inputted.

Inputted to these children because they are visual learners so that’s it, that’s the philosophy and it works beautifully.

And our school is from nursery to 8 and then we have class 10 and 12 and all of it is a national Indian open schooling accredited center.

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What social and emotional impacts come with hearing loss?

If one can understand that deafness is a communication disability and it is an invisible disability, I mean if you see a deaf person, but naturally they do not invoke empathy or sympathy, you know, because they look just like you and me.

It’s only when they raise their hands or you know, start communicating or they come out with a strange sound from their throats, that’s how we say, ‘Oh something is different with him’.

But I want to, I…I would like to go back and explain, a child who’s deafened at age 2, 3, and look at us at age 2, 3, 4, 5, are critical years.

How much we learnt, so much we learned being in the house.

We fought with our sisters, brothers, we learned how to compete, we learned how to share, we got love from my pare…my mother, we got the discipline from the father.

We learned everything was accessible to us.

Deaf people don’t have that.

So, one side is education.

Education they don’t have, they can only copy down very neatly whatever is written on the board but there is a huge gamut of human development that they miss out on.

Rational thinking, analytics…analysis, thinking about consequences of my actions.

All of these are what they say Jivan Vidya, core life skills, that is uh, and my work in the past almost 20 years of work with them, I found this to be the biggest gap.

And I used to think that once I’ve learned Sign Language, it’s just perfect.

We’re getting them employed, it’s perfect but it goes beyond that.

It goes…because it’s a communication disability, they’ve missed out on the critical learning that comes from a family system.

Critical learning and it…so these are the consequences I would say of deafness.

Small gaps, soft skill gaps, understanding of self, lack of confidence, anger, you know, they’re like balls of pure emotion.

How to control my anger?

What is the right path to take?

Let me be, you know, discerning to choose the correct way.

They don’t know that because nobody’s told them.

They’re…small things like stealing.

We were told from childhood, we know stealing is wrong, lying is wrong.

Who tells them?

How can anybody tell them?

Even something so simple as that.

I remember one deaf child, he, his parents brought him to me and he says, ‘the child, he stole money from his father’s pockets’.

So I said, ‘why did you?’

He says why.

I remember that deaf child telling me that every day the father used to, the other hearing sibling, used to tap the father and say, ‘I’m going to the school, give me five rupees, give me whatever, five rupees, I want to have ice-cream.’

So the deaf saw, and he would tap his father and said also I…in some gestures.

The father would say, ‘What is this? What did you want?’

‘No…no, I also…’

He wants the same thing that his brother got or sister got, father did not understand, lack of communication.

With the result, what does the deaf do?

Said ‘okay, they can’t understand me anyway’, so he goes to the pocket and takes the money.

For him it is not wrong.

I mean this is a small little point of how uh, lack of not being able to hear have no access to anything and these are the children we work with so when they come to us, within three months to six months we have to fill in a gap of lifelong learning, holistic learning in just three to six months of what they’ve not had for the last 20 years.

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How should we communicate or engage with individuals who have hearing impairments?

Well, um, first thing is, you know, we have to remove this mindset that we have towards disability.

Disability means inability, somewhere they are beneath us.

I…I…it is terrible.

I think the first simple thing, there’s nothing anybody has to do, you have to just be a good human being.

If I had, if I want to make friends with a deaf person, maybe I don’t know Sign Language, but if I smile and say hi or I say Namastey or I say hi and I smile, that is non-verbal communication and my deaf people are experts in non-verbal communication.

Just that smile is the first step to making a deaf friend.

If you can be respectful to them instead of saying ‘deaf-dumb, what is he doing?’

Expressions, because they’re watching your expressions.

They will know whether you like them or you don’t like them or you feel comfortable with them or not comfortable with them.

The first thing starts with us and how we react to other human beings who are different than what, who we are.

That’s one and now if you’re adults, learn the language.

It’s such a beautiful language.

It’s such a peaceful language.

It doesn’t create any noise pollution either and we are anyway, most of us are multilingual.

I speak five languages.

Most of us Indians speak two to three languages minimum.

Why not Sign Language?

Because this language will add value to your life.

You will not only make friends, if you have an office space or if you run a restaurant or a or have any business, you may even want to say, you know, ‘I’d love to employ one deaf people’.

So it all starts from here and for…I think for me, deaf people have come into my life not because I’m doing them some great noblesse oblige work but I have learned to be a better human being because of them and I continue to do so.

So these are the small things that every human being can do.

It’s not difficult at all, at all.
I am from Gorakhpur, yeah, it’s a beautiful place.

I just want to be a dancer.

I had gone to Nepal, yeah, and I came second in the dancing competition.

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Where does one learn Sign Language?

Well, there are many options now.

Uh, there’s an Indian Sign Language Research and Training Center, so if you want to do a formal course, you can join the two-year thing but you can learn from us.

We have short-term three month online courses.

We also have, if you want to come into the center, all our teachers are deaf anyway.

I mean in fact 70%, we have about, across our five centers, about um, about a hundred staff and out of them 70% of them are all deaf.

I mean you know, you will never know who is hearing and who is deaf here because everybody is using the language of communication that is meant for working with deaf people.

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What is the cost of the Sign Language course offered here?

Well, normally if you can afford it, otherwise we do it for free.

If you can give like, 500 rupees for a three month course.

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What does inclusion mean to you?

Uh, about inclusion, I mean if you go literally into what the meaning, what inclusion means which me, for me, for my deaf children means they’re included in the education system.

Now my question is, by having a beautiful building which is accessible to all kinds of disabilities, children with all kinds of disabilities, including deaf children, does that, does that building provide education, accessible education?

Just having a building where children and go sit with other, other hearing children, sit with other children with different disabilities, are they getting the optimum education?

I know for a fact, because I’ve met hundreds, hundreds of deaf children from an inclusive set…set up and they have imploded emotionally and mentally.

They went there, they were sitting in a classroom where there were other children, maybe who had physical challenges and…but here was a…child who could not hear and speak at all but he could sense that he was mocked and he was teased and he was tormented.

You know how children can be.

There was nobody to sensitize them but the fact that he was there in a classroom and the teacher did not know Sign Language and how can she?

She’s got three deaf children in a class of 20, say, for example and there are multiple deaf children sitting in that classroom.

How is she going to be teaching all of them?

I mean, uh, the hearing, yes, if the child can hear, it’s still comfortable for uh, what about the 3-4, or you know, half the class that is speech and hearing impaired?

They just sit there, gather no knowledge, have no access to any real education except copying it down.

That’s the point I want to make about inclusion.

When you say inclusion, you have to include all diverse groups of children in a way that the environment and the learn is, learning is made accessible to them.

That is me.

Just having a building with all sorts of children sitting in the classroom is not inclusion for me.

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What happens when they leave your school and go on for higher education?

Well, now things are changing and now there’s this, the Interpreters Association, interpreter, being an interpreter is now becoming a viable profession.

Uh, people are wanting to be, becoming an interpreter because there is, they can earn a decent livelihood with that.

Things are changing and some way, I’ll tell you what happens to them at, at our centers we are trying to develop the core strengths also, of the child.

He, we’ll all face problems, you think I haven’t, you haven’t, all of us will face problems but if your core is strong, even if he or she leaves the system, he should have that mental strength, emotional strength to be able to face it because then we’ve opened up a world of knowledge through the language that we gave him in the school and the training.

So for me inclusion is not just having a building with all sorts of children but you know, and I think inclusion can happen and I think it is important, say, for an example, our school which we do, I’m going to be a small school, but we have different classrooms to provide good ecosystems, nurturing environment first.

Different children with different disabilities, maybe they’re in the same building, no problem, but have it in a way that the teacher who’s teaching my deaf kids should know Sign Language, should be able to say ‘hey’.

You saw the classrooms where they’re all chattering, asking questions, why?

Just to have a deaf kid inside.

That for me is inclusion and then other children whether they are hearing, uh, non, non-disabled or different disabilities, they can get together and meet for other activities.

Education is not only about books, they can meet for sports, they can meet for extracurriculum activities.

Other children can also learn Indian Sign Language.

So, from that age there is sensitivity to disability and to deafness and to Sign Language.

For me that is what is inclusion, not just having a building with children.

Have you, I mean, I’ve met too many kids with inclusive setups.

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Can Sign Language be included as a language?

Hasn’t happened yet.

As one of the many languages, we are hoping it will.

But the NEP has now, finally after years and years of thought has put in that without Sign Language deaf children anyway can’t be taught.

Sign Language, the word has found mention in the National Education Policy, what more is, what more can I say?

Our, we have class 10 and 12.

Our kids have opted for Indian Sign Language as a subject.

In fact for me inclusion is, for example, in the NIOS, the National Indian Open Schooling system, where Indian Sign Language has been given as a language, as a subject of choice for kids who are giving class 10.

I mean, wow, that is inclusion.