Sep 13, 20225 min read

COVID-19: The Unique Impact on the Deaf & Hard of Hearing Community

It’s impossible to say that the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t impact everyone’s lives to some degree—from school shutdowns and job losses to concerns about the future and fears about the illness, nearly every part of life has seen change because of COVID. However, the pandemic has had a unique impact on the Deaf & Hard of Hearing (D/HoH) community that many hearing individuals may have never considered. Masking, public health information inaccessibility, a lack of access to healthcare, and technological concerns continue to pose barriers for Deaf/Hard of Hearing individuals as a result of the pandemic that stems from issues present well before 2020. Illuminating these topics is incredibly important to showcase why advocating for accessibility is so crucial.

Masks & Face Coverings

One of the most obvious changes due to COVID-19 is the widespread prevalence of mask usage as a central tenet of disease prevention. While they are an invaluable tool to protect public health (to the point that they have become symbols of the COVID-19 pandemic response itself!), they also provide a barrier to communication for ASL users and other sign languages. Facial expressions constitute a vital component of communication via ASL—they signify emotion and linguistic meaning to the sign. For example, the meaning of the word “big” (as shown below) is greatly exaggerated when accompanied by an intense facial expression and mouthing the “cha” (an action called a ‘mouth morpheme’) to mean “very big!”

versus:

Furthermore, wearing masks physically blocks the ability for people to see lip gestures ands much of a person’s facial expressions that accompany many signed words, which can make it difficult to communicate. (1)

Lip-reading is also an important aspect of communication for many individuals in the Deaf & Hard of Hearing community, which is essentially stripped with masks blocking others’ faces. However, other cues must accompany lipreading, including facial expressions and gestures, to make communication effective. Physically covering this information due a mask can make communication challenging, especially considering that some Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals solely rely on lip reading as not everyone uses sign language. A Hearing Health Foundation survey found that 85 percent of D/HoH individuals experienced difficulty reading lips covered by face masks throughout the pandemic. (2) While clear masks have been used to some degree to circumvent this issue (see our previous blog post “Smile Masks Project” for more info on this excellent innovation!), its use was unfortunately not nearly as mainstream as would be necessary to fully prevent the issue.

Some Hard of Hearing individuals may also rely on residual hearing to communicate—for which masks also cause some trouble because of muffling of noise. Beatrice Bachleda, a Deaf yoga instructor, describes that “Before, I would rely on lipreading and residual hearing to communicate with everyone from cashiers to bank tellers to the dentist and more. With masks, I sometimes don’t even realize if anyone is talking to me, which can lead to some pretty awkward encounters.” (3)

Lastly, mask straps pose an issue for individuals who wear hearing aids or cochlear implants, given that all of these devices loop behind the ear; this increases the risk of discomfort due to the mask because of added pressure, as well as an increases the risk of accidentally losing or breaking a hearing device, which can be very costly. (1) Fortunately, several solutions were developed reasonably quickly, including the use of mask extensions or specialized face masks that can be tied behind the head.

(Image ref: First Nations Health Authority) (4)

Navigating COVID-19 Public Health Information

Timely and accessible public health information was more likely to be unavailable for Deaf / Hard of Hearing individuals. A recent study on the Deaf community’s experiences in navigating COVID-19 information showed that, “adults who are Deaf were 4.7 times more likely to report difficulty accessing COVID-19 information,” even though they used more prevention strategies and had equal ability to identify its symptoms. (5) Generally speaking, very little COVID-19 information was available in ASL, placing individuals who use ASL at an avoidable disadvantage regarding accessing crucial information to keep themselves safe in a timely manner.

In addition, captioning and television issues can cause interpretation to be unreliable and unavailable on live television, causing some individuals to avoid the use of this outlet. “My local news has had interpreters, but sometimes, they cut the interpreter off, or graphics and captions will be covering their window, and it makes it complicated to view,” says Rikki Poynter, a Deaf YouTuber and activist. (3) In the United States, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) opened a lawsuit against the White House after months of public health briefings without any ASL interpreters. (6) To fix this issue, many activists began raising awareness of these discrepancies to increase resources available so Deaf / Hard of Hearing individuals can have equitable access to this information. For example, the NAD’s work led to all White House press briefings to include ASL interpretation from October 1, 2021, onward.

(Image ref: REUTERS/Hannah McKay). (7)

Accessing Healthcare & Technology

As a method to limit COVID-19 spread, hospitals and doctors’ offices implemented capacity restriction policies, where only the patient can enter medical facilities. However, as a consequence, this can limit access to in-person ASL interpreters. Jennifer Stringer, a Hard of Hearing individual and CIO of UC Berkeley, wrote about her experience with COVID-19 and getting diagnosed with breast cancer during the pandemic. (8) “They always tell you to bring somebody in with a doctor when you're getting bad health news, right? Because you need somebody else to hear. And that was completely unavailable because of COVID,” she writes.

In addition, the pandemic exposed a lack of reliable technology for certain tools, especially when people need them most. Telehealth, while an invaluable tool for everyone during the pandemic, was often vulnerable to issues such as poor internet access or insufficiently developed closed captioning services. Video calls from hospital rooms, as the new go-to for interacting with loved ones in a COVID-isolated care setting, can be similarly impacted. DeafBlind individuals were particularly affect4ed by the lack of visitation and subsequent transfer to video calling given the physical nature of tactile ASL communication due to the touching of one anothers' hands while signing. (3)

The challenges in communication due to the pandemic are not exclusive to the realm of healthcare as the world saw the transition of education into a virtual format for several months. Many Deaf & Hard of Hearing students experienced limited virtual interpretive services and inaccessible schooling resources when suddenly shifted online. (7)

Bottom Line & Next Steps

While there have been an unequal amount of challenges posed towards Deaf & Hard of Hearing individuals due to the pandemic, in response, many individuals and organizations have stepped up to advocate for accessible and equitable information. Also, the increase in virtual events further boosted demand for captioning and virtual interpretive services, increasing the development and quality of technologies for their continued use.

In response to the need for accessible information, many individuals began to provide necessary and tailored information in formats accessible for the wider Deaf / Hard of Hearing audiences in ASL. Many Deaf medical professionals fluent in ASL, such as Britny Bensman (a Licenced Practical Nurse in Ohio) (9), used their platforms on social media to share pandemic-related public health information for their wider audiences in ASL so that all could be kept safe and up-to-date with evolving information (Check out Britny’s page at @access_deafmed on Instagram!). In addition, the Association of Medical Professionals with Hearing Losses developed a COVID-19 Resource List of trusted sources of information, which lists other Deaf-run organizations that provide COVID-19 related information in ASL. (5)

As such, the COVID-19 pandemic has shone an additional light on the health inequities the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing communities oftentimes face—however, it has also shown the importance and fantastic outcomes advocacy can have on closing the gap!

References & Resources

COVID-19: The Unique Impact on the Deaf & Hard of Hearing Community

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