Washington: As deaf Americans debate candidates for the 2024 White House, some are using the president’s classic aviator sunglasses symbol to refer to Joe Biden or make a gesture similar to Donald Trump’s retreating signature.
But experts say many of the approximately one million deaf and hard-of-hearing users of American Sign Language (ASL) in the United States cannot participate in politics at all because campaigns are not accessible.
In a country where the last two presidential contests have been decided by only tens of thousands of votes, this group represents a potentially important but underutilized vote blog.
“The most important thing is that deaf people are welcome in (this) country,” said Brendan Stern, a professor of political science at Gallaudet University in Washington.
Deaf people “should feel like citizens,” he told AFP through an interpreter. “For that to happen, we need not only access, but meaningful engagement in difference.”
Presidential campaigns that receive federal funding are legally required to transcribe their ads, but transcripts can be inaccurate or misleading, and most candidates don’t hire interpreters for live events.
Recorder does not always provide enough permission. ASL is its own language, separate from English, with its own grammar, word order, and meaning.
When deciding who to support, candidates may be interested in their positions on issues related to disabilities, such as special school funding, but they are also focused on issues that Americans care about.
Clinical psychologist Danielle Previ, 35, of Rusa, says politicians are most interested in her views on women’s rights, but events such as candidate debates can be difficult to track.
“I feel like I’m lost because it’s so fast,” the previous post told AFP.
“I just … (heard) my partner say, ‘What happened?’ “I don’t like the idea of stuffing me,” he said. I want to understand myself.”
Alex Abenchuchan, a deaf journalist from Michigan, wanted to address this information gap and started hosting a YouTube news show called The Daily Moth in ASL in 2015.
“There are some conservatives and some deaf,” Abenchuchan said of his audience. “That’s a big gap.”
This preference can be expressed in the symbols chosen to contact politicians: the symbol for Biden’s aviator is often used by supporters of the president, and the symbol for Trump’s hair is often used by criminals.
During Barack Obama’s presidency, many deaf Republicans were linked to the hand drawing for the letter “O” and Democrats for the “liar” gesture.
The name badge for Kamala Harris — a gesture that resembles the letter “K” and a lotus flower — was created by a deaf Black and South Asian woman as a way to honor the vice president’s legacy.
To be neutral, Abenchuchan said he usually mentions politicians’ names.
According to Stern, professor of political science, there are almost no formal surveys of the partisan views of the deaf population in the United States.
He also cited research showing that people with disabilities are less engaged in the political system than the general system, which is unclear to what extent American voters are deaf.
But studies measuring the relationship between sound and deaf behavior have been inconclusive, he said.
To promote greater political participation on the Gallaudet campus, Stern, the nation’s only deaf political science major, trained a student debate team with the goal of registering deaf Americans to vote.
Gallaudet student ZaniBelle Hoglind, 20, said she votes in her home state of Colorado but doesn’t follow politics.
“You have to be a good, clear and certified translator,” says Hoglind.
The Biden administration hired a full-time ASL interpreter, though it was deemed legally sufficient to provide only transcripts.
Elsie Stecker, a third-generation deaf signer, told AFP that she wanted to “represent what the speaker is trying to do” with the content and tone of the message, which features White House briefings and presidential speeches in spoken language.
Stecker said he was “disappointed” to play a role in showing deaf Americans that his government is “investing in the deaf community, looking out for the deaf community.”
