As much as I'd love to say my school has been meeting my accommodations flawlessly, I am unable to say anything positive. I was hoping to update after the issues have been resolved so I could say, "This is what went wrong. Here's how my school fixed it. Therefore my school is awesome!" Unfortunately it hasn't been fixed, and I am not proud of my school at this time. I would like to be.
It has now been 8 weeks since nursing school started and there are still multiple issues, primarily with captioning the podcasts and videos. I've had to hunt down the materials, tell my access counselor what needs to be captioned, and hope it gets done before I have a quiz or lab skills test. Which means everyone else gets accessed to the materials on time and gets a week to review, but I scramble at the last minute. How is this equal access? Why is it too difficult for them to caption the materials, and then release the materials online for everyone to view at the same time?
As nice as my professors are, their niceness interferes with my expensive education. They do not understand the needs of deaf patients, yet alone deaf students. Their ignorance is not their fault--medical professionals are taught the most offensive methods for communicating with deaf people. The books we read tell us to encourage deaf patients to speak with their voices-- if they feel ashamed--even if the patients don't want to speak-- even if the medical professional finds them difficult to understand!
The books also encourage medical professionals to tell hearing parents to quickly get their "hearing impaired" children to audiologists and fitted with hearing aids so they're not developmentally delayed. The books say hearing loss can be corrected by cochlear implant, hearing aids, audiology and speech therapy. Maybe if they'd include sign language in their list, they would actually prevent " . . .delays in cognitive, verbal, behavioral, and emotional development."
These delays occur when hearing parents refuse to raise their kids bilingually. It has nothing to do with deafness and everything to do with resources and communication. Why was I able to overcome my barriers put forth by hearing society and being raised mainstreamed? That's really an update for another day, but the summary is luck/genetics, middle-class resources, and even the argument that people mistakenly believe I've overcome barriers.
