Web Accessibility for the Hearing Impaired

While speaking to various groups this summer, a number of folks have raised the topic of web accessibility for the hearing impaired. While it’s true that much attention is deservedly given to users with vision and motor skill impairments, we must not forget this segment of the demographic that also benefits from efforts to improve digital accessibility.

There is an excellent article on A List Apart this month that seeks to understand deafness beyond simply providing captioning equivalents. One item of note is the way deaf people think of themselves and how they relate to the hearing world. According to author Lisa Herrod, there is a distinction between people who consider themselves deaf vs those who claim participation in the Deaf community. The following is quoted from the Australian Association of the Deaf in Herrod’s article:

The Deaf community is considered to be a linguistic and cultural minority group, similar to an ethnic community. Just as we capitalise the names of ethnic communities and cultures (e.g., Italian, Jewish) we capitalise the name of the Deaf community and culture. Since not all people who are physically deaf use Auslan and identify with the Deaf community, the d in deaf is not capitalized when we are referring to all deaf people or the physical condition of not hearing.

Also of interest is the viewpoint that the Deaf are a community of users who are not disabled; they simply employ a different primary language than others in their respective host countries. This is an important cultural distinction that cultivates a more holistic approach to meeting accessibility requirements, one that takes into account the difference between “transcription and translation”:

Captioning is perfect for the post-lingual deaf or hard-of hearing audience; it presents content in an accessible format, in the primary language of the user. However, as captioning is a transcription, for the Deaf audience, content is presented in the user’s second language, one with which the user may have little or no fluency. While captioning provides better access to content for the Deaf than if there were none, it’s important to remember that there is a big difference in the needs of those who can’t hear (deaf) and those who speak another language altogether (Deaf).

The article is full of great resources and examples, and I encourage everyone to check it out. You might also find Maxine Sherrin’s post of interest. Having just been interviewed via podcast, it certainly occurs to me that podcast transcription services would be of great value.