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Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

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21–30 of 79 posts

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#21

Stop wasting everyone's time with face to face meetings. Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. Written documentation of actions are easily referenced and binding.

> Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. I wish more people recognized this, instead of expecting everyone else to remember "that thing that we talked about, like, last week". I imagine it should be possible to create an organization where all communication would be just specification and documentation. I wonder if there is anything that can't in principle be done that way.

> remember "that thing that we talked about, like, last week".

If you're lucky. Usually it's “Hey new hire, remember that thing Alice and Bob talked about last year, before they left the company?”

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#22

Stop wasting everyone's time with face to face meetings. Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. Written documentation of actions are easily referenced and binding.

> Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. I wish more people recognized this, instead of expecting everyone else to remember "that thing that we talked about, like, last week". I imagine it should be possible to create an organization where all communication would be just specification and documentation. I wonder if there is anything that can't in principle be done that way.

You might want to check out Automattic (the makers of Wordpress) and their P2 tool - https://vickiboykis.com/2021/07/17/writing-for-distributed-t...

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#23

Stop wasting everyone's time with face to face meetings. Words are meaningless, easily misinterpreted and non binding. Written documentation of actions are easily referenced and binding.

This is an absolutely horrendous claim. Every person is different, there is absolutely no replacement for face to face talk for me and my current co-workers. I need it, if my company decides it'll be replaced with written-only communication, I'll leave them in a second. Seeing people's facial expressions, hearing their tone, understanding how they react to spontaneous questions, what frustrates them, what things they feel confident about, what things they're puzzled about... There is no easy way to express these via text.

Please understand that I have no problem with remote work; I'm only responding to your implication that face to face meetings are "waste of time".

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#24
A lot of folks here wants you to ask him what he wants.

Be prepared to hear that he doesn’t know what would help. But he will appreciate that you’re giving him agency.

One of the challenges I have with this question as someone who is mainstreamed, profoundly deaf (this means I don’t know sign language) is that deafness takes a number of forms, so there’s no real one size fits all solution.

But far be it for me to point out problems not suggest solutions!

* ask him if it would help to provide a real-time transcription service. This is not an automated system but a specially trained human who will transcribe meetings in real time.

* ask him if he wants someone to write a meeting summary that captures decisions made, action items delegated etc. then make sure that happens.

* ask him if an ASL interpreter would help.

* sign up for sign language courses yourself and use your professional development budget to pay for it. If he doesn’t know ASL ask if he would want to learn also. Pay for his training.

* help him find a professional community of deaf persons to be a part of. Give him options. No group is perfect for everyone.

* the biggest barrier he will face in his life is isolation. So support him so that he doesn’t feel isolated.

* if your company throws company events for everyone to participate in, try to create a something similar, running concurrently, that’s accessible for him. Solicit ideas from him but it could look like a small group chat online or playing games online.

* hearing aids (if he needs them) are REALLY FRICKING EXPENSIVE - benefits typically cover up to $500 and aids can cost $2-7K. Offer to buy his next pair.

This is all off the top of my head. I could probably think of more with some time.

I hope this helps. Thank you for taking the initiative to make him feel part of your team.

(Edit: formatting)

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also changed standups to mean that only the person holding the Bluetooth mic connected to his cochlear implant could speak: that had the added benefit of stopping standups from falling into solution-finding exercises. That's wonderful! As the parent of a child with bilateral hearing loss, this accommodation would help immensely in his future work and study environments.

It went even further than that: as he had difficulty in lip reading at a shallow angle in the original (too big) team circle it was the catalyst we needed to split the team into three smaller sub-teams, which also benefited the overall team’s performance.

Two pizza team is out, internal angle of <120 degrees is in! This rocks. Total curb cut effect for all the other team members.

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#26
post #6

Is this a team mate at a US company? If so, note that Teams live captioning may not be enough to meet your non discrimination requirements. Your company may have a legal obligation to hire an ASL interpreter or human transcriber, including for in person meetings. My biggest recommendation is to use a phone call for audio because he can then use America’s free video relay service for ASL or captioned telephone service…

https://www.drawbattle.io/ is a great bonding game with no audio needs

Nice suggestion! In the same spirit, Gartic Phone[1] is also a great team bonding game that needs no audio. It plays like a telephone game, but with drawings and (written) guessing. The way the initial message is transformed during all the drawing-guessing rounds is always hilarious.

[1] https://garticphone.com/

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#27
post #6

Is this a team mate at a US company? If so, note that Teams live captioning may not be enough to meet your non discrimination requirements. Your company may have a legal obligation to hire an ASL interpreter or human transcriber, including for in person meetings. My biggest recommendation is to use a phone call for audio because he can then use America’s free video relay service for ASL or captioned telephone service…

https://www.drawbattle.io/ is a great bonding game with no audio needs

We play https://skribbl.io/ religiously

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#28

A lot of folks here wants you to ask him what he wants. Be prepared to hear that he doesn’t know what would help. But he will appreciate that you’re giving him agency. One of the challenges I have with this question as someone who is mainstreamed, profoundly deaf (this means I don’t know sign language) is that deafness takes a number of forms, so there’s no real one size fits all solution. But far be it for me to poi…

Could you expound on the definition of profoundly deaf, please? I think the phrase is used differently here (US American midwest/south).

Re: Ask HN: Help me help my deaf teammate

#30
Howdy there. I create transcripts for executive board meetings; providing live comprehension assistance for someone like this has been a thing I've mulled occasionally, as it would be nice to do something meaningful when I'm not detailing the intrigues of the corporate elite. If you'd like to discuss it, feasibility on my end would be primarily determined by your meeting frequency and duration — I don't have to keep any particular hours for my primary transcription work, but I deal with high volume. Rough estimate for availability: if you're in Teams meetings with your colleague fewer than 6ish hours a week, that could be tenable. If that fits, I'm very interested in seeing if I can help y'all.
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