Local agencies learn about communicating with deaf persons

Stephanie Logan walked around the outside of the circle of chairs talking rapidly as she gestured to the group assembled in the Housing Authority office.

"You need to understand how difficult it is for deaf people to interact with the hearing," Logan said.

Logan is the executive director of Leadership Through Education and Advocacy for the Deaf; and she knows first-hand about the communication gap; she's deaf. Logan lost her hearing as an adult, the result of spinal meningitis, and even though she remained able to speak, it took her a long time after losing her hearing to start talking around others. "I didn't want to talk at first," Logan said. "I didn't know what my voice would sound like."

Since Logan doesn't get the audible, internal feedback hearing people do from talking, it is hard to maintain the natural sound of her voice. It takes a lot of concentration and because of that Logan limits the length of the training sessions she gives.

The event participants were from a variety of local agencies providing community services. Martha Sander, executive director of Moss House/Families in Crisis, brought Logan in to train domestic violence advocates for her own organization but opened the training up to other community groups.

As part of an exercise, Logan had the participants sit in a circle and work on a problem, designating two of the participants as deaf and one of the participants as blind as well as deaf.

Local attorney and Children's Center board member Jeff Feuquay took part and was designated as a deaf person. After the exercise he described his perceptions.

"I felt mostly isolation," Feuquay said. "The hearing people immediately started planning without any input from the deaf people."

Logan responded that the situation Feuquay found himself in is familiar to the deaf community.

"Deaf people are used to having hearing people take charge of situations," Logan said. "That's why deaf professionals are so highly esteemed by the deaf community."

Logan stressed that there's a need for organizations providing services to the deaf to understand how deaf people view such interactions. According to the material supplied by Logan, deaf people often have a distrust of hearing individuals and a fear of ostracism and labeling. Deaf persons also often face a dearth of services due to language limitations.

When working with the deaf community, organizations have to keep several things in mind, such as cultural issues, trust issues, deaf values, social needs and linguistic issues, Logan said, adding that forging partnerships and sharing resources can be aneffective strategy for smaller communities, where resources are limited.