Charting Deaf Territory, Part One

How UVa Is Managing To Accommodate a Deaf Medical Student

Contributed by Christopher Sherman Read, Accessible Technology Specialist, University of Virginia

Preface

Utter disbelief. That’s the initial reaction some people have when they hear that a Deaf student is attending the medical school program at the University of Virginia. The underlying sentiment is – How is that possible?

 

Call me jaded, but after nine years of serving people with disabilities, I’m not very surprised by what the human spirit desires and can achieve. I know of Braille-reading students who have majored in music and Chinese and a Deaf student who majored in Spanish. That’s downright crazy, to most people. But if I’ve learned anything from this line of work…Possibility is ultimately defined by an individual; whereas, limitations are often defined by society.

As a service provider and tech solution coordinator, my role is a matter of finding and offering tools that will ensure equal access to the education.

Certainly every Deaf medical student will have distinct accommodation needs and preferences, but the point of writing this report is to provide a template for those who may be facing a similar task of accommodating a Deaf medical student for the first time.

It’s been 19 weeks. You may ask. How’s it going so far?

We’re not out of the woods by any means. We haven’t even cleared the first of four years. We expect the changing nature of the curriculum (such as the clerkship) to throw us more curveballs.

Except for a few minor hiccups though, I’d say it’s going pretty damn well.

The student says the combination of accommodations is working well and he’s doing well on exams. He’s so easy-going and amiable that it makes our job that much easier. The DHH team prepared to get all the elements in place on time. Overall we’re very pleased with the quality and timeliness of service, but we still have to be vigilant and ready to respond to anything that drops.

The Preparation

The core DHH service team consisted of a Service Coordinator, University Interpreter and myself – the AT Specialist. We heard about the student’s acceptance to the program in June and hustled for two months to prepare for Orientation, August 1st. Our plan was to essentially provide numerous accommodation options to start, then pare back as needed after learning what was working best for the student.

Checklist

1. Find and contract interpreters with medical expertise who would be a good fit for the student. (Local sign language interpreter Rene Devito is fantastic and critical to the operation.)
2. Find and contract live captioning vendors with medical expertise. (We totally lucked out with Norma Miller who is superb! She and Rene the interpreter together are the real workhorses providing the custom quality that’s imperative.)
3. Find and contract closed captioning vendors with medical expertise. (Automatic Sync Technologies’ Kara Stark and Margaret Pedrosa have been extremely valuable with their responsive support.)
4. Set up university purchase orders for vendors
5. Meet the curriculum director: review the typical day, the classroom environment, the inventory of course materials, the detailed schedules, the key med school contacts. We found a true champion here at the UVa School of Medicine.
6. Tour the classrooms and labs to determine audio tech needs and blocking for interpreters
7. Meet the student and interpreters and provide tech orientation and training

Checklist Recommendations

• Hold online auditions for interpreters. Announce the opportunity through targeted online channels. Prepare an audio sample for prospective interpreters to sign. Ask the student to rank the interpreters, as they will be spending lots of quality time together for the next 4 years.
• Consult the DSSHE ListServ (SUNY at Buffalo) and follow recommendations to secure live captioning and closed captioning vendors with a medical specialty.
• Reach out to the medical school key players (system leaders, instructional coordinators and classroom tech support) and develop team unity.
• Obtain weekly schedules and contact info; Coordinate Q&A sessions for each System.
• Test network access and connection speed and device setup (talk with med school IT Dir)
• Obtain visual access to classroom and live transcription, via classroom webcams and Streamtext
• Establish communication channels – chat windows, cell phone texting & face-to-face meetings -well in advance.
• Purchase AT Phone to communicate with student, interpreters and Class Techs; Critical for troubleshooting on the fly
• Check on status periodically with the student, transcriber and interpreters and ensure that the system is working well.

 

Stay tuned next week (1/13/14) for Part Two, including what has worked well, what hasn’t worked well, and more.