Miss-Delectable
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- Apr 18, 2004
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When people talk about accessibility, they usually mean physical barriers. But what to do when the barrier is in someone's mind?
That was the question when my friend Bev and I signed up for golf lessons.
Bev has a profound hearing loss, and group situations can be challenging. She manages thanks to her cochlear implant, her ability to read lips and, in lecture situation, her use of a small FM hearing device.
The FM device comprises a microphone about the size of a raisin that clips onto the speaker's lapel. This mike is connected by a wire to a transmitter smaller than the size of a deck of cards that fits into the speaker's pocket. The sound is amplified only for Bev, no one else.
At our first lesson, the golf pro refused to have anything to do with the microphone.
"I don't like it, and I won't wear it," the pro said.
I was shocked. Bev was not.
A writer and former chair of the Canadian Hearing Society, she has faced a lifetime of discrimination and ignorance. "People thought I was retarded when I was young simply because I was profoundly deaf," she says. "I've had people dismiss me or patronize me all my life. The old expression `deaf and dumb' made it worse."
By the time she graduated from university and started working, she figured out how to advocate on her behalf, and was usually able to ask for the help she needed. So, at our next lesson, she tried again.
Thinking the pro might not have understood how the device worked, Bev arrived early and demonstrated it to her. Once again, the pro flatly refused to wear it.
Bev gave up on the pro but not on golf. She did her best to get through the lessons by listening hard and lip-reading. Often, though, the pro's back was turned. At one point, the pro turned to me and said, "Your friend won't hear me, so you explain this to her."
I made a human rights inquiry and was told Bev had grounds to make a formal complaint against the pro. Instead, she wrote a letter to the golf pro and the golf course explaining the small accommodation that was refused, quoting the response from the provincial government accessibility office and asking only for an apology.
The pro never responded. The golf course did, offering us two free golf lessons, calling the pro's behaviour "inexcusable" and promising to better train its staff. I hope that training includes such top golfers as Israeli Zohar Sharon, who is blind, and American Kevin Hall, who is deaf.
Hall is the first deaf golfer ever to play on the PGA tour and, according to the Associated Press, he communicates by reading lips and writing notes. Sharon wins championships with the help of a friend who describes the hole, tells him how long it is, helps him choose a club, and places the club behind the ball aimed in the right direction.
Bev, who wrote a memoir of growing up deaf, Wired for Sound: A Journey into Hearing, often gives lectures to students and parents on deafness. When she recounted her golfing experience to a class of undergraduate psychology students, they were shocked and angry.
"When I asked them why they thought it happened, they suggested two possible reasons," Bev says. "The first was ignorance about the technology. The second was that the golf pro simply figured she could get away with it."
It looks like she figured wrong.
When people talk about accessibility, they usually mean physical barriers. But what to do when the barrier is in someone's mind?
That was the question when my friend Bev and I signed up for golf lessons.
Bev has a profound hearing loss, and group situations can be challenging. She manages thanks to her cochlear implant, her ability to read lips and, in lecture situation, her use of a small FM hearing device.
The FM device comprises a microphone about the size of a raisin that clips onto the speaker's lapel. This mike is connected by a wire to a transmitter smaller than the size of a deck of cards that fits into the speaker's pocket. The sound is amplified only for Bev, no one else.
At our first lesson, the golf pro refused to have anything to do with the microphone.
"I don't like it, and I won't wear it," the pro said.
I was shocked. Bev was not.
A writer and former chair of the Canadian Hearing Society, she has faced a lifetime of discrimination and ignorance. "People thought I was retarded when I was young simply because I was profoundly deaf," she says. "I've had people dismiss me or patronize me all my life. The old expression `deaf and dumb' made it worse."
By the time she graduated from university and started working, she figured out how to advocate on her behalf, and was usually able to ask for the help she needed. So, at our next lesson, she tried again.
Thinking the pro might not have understood how the device worked, Bev arrived early and demonstrated it to her. Once again, the pro flatly refused to wear it.
Bev gave up on the pro but not on golf. She did her best to get through the lessons by listening hard and lip-reading. Often, though, the pro's back was turned. At one point, the pro turned to me and said, "Your friend won't hear me, so you explain this to her."
I made a human rights inquiry and was told Bev had grounds to make a formal complaint against the pro. Instead, she wrote a letter to the golf pro and the golf course explaining the small accommodation that was refused, quoting the response from the provincial government accessibility office and asking only for an apology.
The pro never responded. The golf course did, offering us two free golf lessons, calling the pro's behaviour "inexcusable" and promising to better train its staff. I hope that training includes such top golfers as Israeli Zohar Sharon, who is blind, and American Kevin Hall, who is deaf.
Hall is the first deaf golfer ever to play on the PGA tour and, according to the Associated Press, he communicates by reading lips and writing notes. Sharon wins championships with the help of a friend who describes the hole, tells him how long it is, helps him choose a club, and places the club behind the ball aimed in the right direction.
Bev, who wrote a memoir of growing up deaf, Wired for Sound: A Journey into Hearing, often gives lectures to students and parents on deafness. When she recounted her golfing experience to a class of undergraduate psychology students, they were shocked and angry.
"When I asked them why they thought it happened, they suggested two possible reasons," Bev says. "The first was ignorance about the technology. The second was that the golf pro simply figured she could get away with it."
It looks like she figured wrong.