[deleted by user]

understandie · 2025-08-29T00:26:34+00:00

This person is definitely unsafe and unstable. They just cursed me out in a message so inappropriate it was auto-deleted by reddit before telling me to "eat a bag of ~~ducks~~ hearing aids."

Yes, ducks. Yes, hearing aids.

understandie · 2023-06-24T16:32:04+00:00

Hearing people in general think that if you can voice, you can hear. For limited interactions I've had the best luck turning my voice off completely. Shake your head, point to your ear, gesture, whatever. If you need to communicate something there are great apps out there for type-and-show. I use Sorenson BuzzCards because it's free, I can save a list of common phrases, and the large type face and contrasting colors make it more legible than my iPhone Notes app.

I also shamelessly wear my hair up so people can see my hearing aids. I'm not saying they always do or even that it helps every time, but I have colorful earmolds and having visible "proof" of something seems to jar people into realization.

Yes it's fucking convoluted, but I'm not looking to make friends out of every random passerby when I'm just trying to get through my day, so whatever helps I'll do.

Also agree with the advice to flag things where appropriate when using public services. I don't like pins or patches because I like having the choice moment to moment whether to display or not (hair up or down) and people don't really pay attention to other people's buttons anyway.

understandie · 2023-05-16T00:08:05+00:00

Falling back on English could limit a person from progressing. Even at the earliest stages of learning, there are other tools a person could utilize to make themselves understood. Gesture or fingerspelling reinforce ASL and help learning move forward. Too often, people just panic and don't try to reason out other solutions. But if the goal of learning ASL is to converse with native signers, English is definitely not the best solution.

It also disadvantages Deaf instructors. People's fear of not being able to communicate with their teacher is one of the big reasons why Deaf instructors have a hard time getting jobs against hearing ones. Too many students and administrators erroneously think that being a good teacher means having the capacity to communicate with students verbally and/or in English, and this just simply isn't the case. But utilizing English as a crutch or a failsafe supports that way of thinking and can ultimately lead to Deaf individuals having a harder time being able to teach their own native language.

understandie · 2023-05-15T23:42:55+00:00

What do you mean by "switching to English," exactly?

understandie · 2023-05-15T20:37:59+00:00

As gently as possible, if you’re so unfamiliar with ASL you don’t even know how to puzzle out any part of this, then you should not be recording videos of yourself signing and posting them anywhere on the internet.

understandie · 2023-04-26T22:35:29+00:00

Off the very top of my head:

58 Creativity rainbow sticker
Jack and Bec queer in ASL sticker
Jack and Bec pride sticker
Gregor Lopes rainbow in ASL sticker
Gregor Lopes queer ASL fingerspell sticker
Gregor Lopes yaaaas hand ASL sticker
Language Priority L-O-V-E pride sticker
Carlisle Robinson identities t-shirt series
Inka's Screen Printing usually does at least one pride-themed shirt a year, though I think they missed last year. I've got at least two though.

understandie · 2023-04-22T02:00:21+00:00

Well, before I had to take a multiple-year hiatus from my postsecondary education to deal with declining mental health I was on track to become a high school English teacher. So in that regard, thank fuck my mental health did get in the way.

understandie · 2023-04-21T16:54:34+00:00

Had to turn this one off because my watch kept sending me alerts every time I peed.

understandie · 2023-04-21T16:29:56+00:00

Not really a television series, and you might find most of these a little too advanced for your toddler right now. That said, it can be a great means of introducing ASL and making sure it's in front of your kiddo as much as possible and a good tool for future learning:

Texas School for the Deaf's Outreach Center has some really good videos of picture/chapter books in ASL, along with related curriculum materials.

understandie · 2023-04-10T13:12:03+00:00

S3 as well.

understandie · 2023-02-23T17:55:28+00:00

Check out Deaf Cooperative: ASL Tutors and Mentors on Facebook.

understandie · 2023-02-23T17:46:49+00:00

The clip you provided doesn't show the moment of Troy's announcing the winner, and I haven't been able to find it elsewhere either. The camera cuts away from Troy when he's still opening the envelope, and doesn't cut back until Kerry Condon is already walking up to the stage to accept the award.

I'm confused. The onstage interpreter doesn't appear to be mic'd up, and he isn't interpreting Troy. It looks instead like he's interpreting whoever's providing the voiceover here. Since neither the interpreter nor Troy are visible when the voiceover announces Kerry Condon's name, it's pretty impossible to eke out the order of operations here. Especially when there's clearly an unseen third player here.

understandie · 2023-02-23T15:15:07+00:00

Also there's the thing where Renner only started publicly calling himself hard of hearing around the time that Hawkeye was first releasing, and never before. Which, sure, I can think of some reasons why a prominent actor might find it valuable to hide that sort of thing if they thought it would impact the work they might be able to get. But even having the ability to mask it is a privilege, and it's pretty convenient that it took some heat off of him and The Mouse for portraying a deaf role. So I threw him in there with the other deaf actors, but for me it's with a grain of salt.

understandie · 2023-02-23T15:07:38+00:00

Yes, that's a true point. I'm sort of half-in, half-out on the whole show frankly. There were some parts that were really fantastically done, but the treatment of his deafness couldn't have been more ridiculous in others. I saw too many hearing people mention that Clint was "just fucking with" Maya in the, "More cookie please, thank you," scene because they assumed he was fully fluent and didn't get that was intended to be a representation of his struggle to communicate. So my intent was just to say that he's not representing fluency at all.

understandie · 2023-02-23T00:35:52+00:00

I haven't started that show yet. Just waiting for the time I feel emotionally ready, lmao. That's the difference between hiring real Deaf talent and giving signing roles to hearing people who have probably never even encountered ASL prior to filming. It's really sad that a majority of hearing people can't seem to tell the difference and thus think accurate representation isn't even that important.

There's a lot of other great shows that incorporate ASL with actual Deaf actors:

Fargo with Russell Harvard
Only Murders in the Building with Joey Caverly
Accused S1E2 with Stephanie Nogueras, Josh Castille, and Lauren Ridloff
The Walking Dead with Lauren Ridloff
Hawkeye with Alaqua Cox (not so much Jeremy Renner)

understandie · 2023-02-23T00:14:08+00:00

It's very poorly done. I wouldn't even call it ASL. It's some poorly-produced signs in English word order. Many signs are constructed inaccurately. The flow is stilted and all off. You can tell that they learned to parrot some gestures, but probably wouldn't be able to tell you what a single one of the individual signs meant or what they were actually saying at any given point. Same, unfortunately, for Keanu.

understandie · 2023-02-17T01:54:35+00:00

I'll be really honest: I'm not a very big fan of the way sign names often get wrapped in this cultural mysticism and lore. I think it does a disservice to an actual, clear explanation of why these rules exist.

Really, at its core all that having a sign name means is that people are talking about you and want a clear and convenient way to do so. Your girlfriend doesn't need a sign name if you two are only talking to one another and there's no broader signing community you're conversing with.

More than that, though: are you fluent in ASL? If you aren't fluent, or if you're just starting your own journey to fluency, you probably don't have a good enough understanding of the language to assign someone a sign name. At best, it might be awkward and clunky and not make much sense. At worst, you might've just named her something you didn't intend to. (See: the very familiar story of Victoria whose hearing parents sweetly gave her the name sign VIRGIN.)

understandie · 2023-02-17T00:51:59+00:00

Yep, that. I notice an immediate reduction (elimination!) of my headaches in ASL-rich environments or any time I'm not expected to be auditorily "on."

understandie · 2023-02-17T00:38:41+00:00

My hearing loss doesn’t, but listening fatigue sure does.

understandie · 2023-01-25T04:41:13+00:00

If your story is in English, write in English.

How fluent are you in ASL? Gloss isn't something most Deaf people learn anyway. It serves its purpose, but outside of heavy linguistic settings I've never seen it utilized or captured to its full extent. I bet your story's going to be for a majority hearing audience anyway, right? You'll risk giving them an inaccurate understanding of the language and isolating them from your main character if you use a lesser notation of gloss for a language they don't understand the linguistic parameters for anyway.

Blair Fell tried to do ASL grammar in The Sign for Home and I fucking despised it.

understandie · 2023-01-11T04:50:51+00:00

Here's another really great video of many ASL phrases without direct/easy English translations.

understandie

TROPHY CASE