Accessibility – September 2017

February 2020 – I wrote this blog in 2017 but didn’t publish (idek why) but now I’m doing it lol

September 2017 – Few months ago, one day my interpreter was sick so she went home. She tried to find a replacement but there’s no interpreter available, I thought to myself that I would definetly be fine without an interpreter for a day because I’ve experienced having no interpreter for more than one day.

So….. I go to my art class, it was fine because normally not much need to interpret because I was doing my art work, also after that I went to my digital tech class which it was little fine because my teacher talked little too much because we were creating our own websites using coding. Later, after lunch time, I had maths class for double period. It was the most difficult thing had happened to me, because I normally not very good at maths, but I understand because I had interpreter there in the whole time. When I was in my maths class, I came in like a normal times, then my teacher started talking about our test we did in the last class and said that we need to check if there’s something that we can fix it up because that’s the last day of the test and have to hand in on that day. As you can see how I just said what we were doing in maths class without an interpreter, well, that’s what I only know in whole 2 hours of maths, that’s not enough I know that there is more than what I knew.

As you know that I went to a deaf school in Sydney, Australia for 2 and half years. I was 4 years old, and I didn’t know what’s like to be in hearing school until when my family moved back to New Zealand. I started in hearing school when in was 6 years old with no interpreter at all, but luckily I had a teacher who learned to sign and a best friend who interpret for me sometimes. I was struggling because I had no idea what was going on, my parents set up an interpreter but only for an hour a week (yeah, that’s right). Later I finished my primary school and moved to an intermediate school in the city, I was about 11 years old. Finally I had a full time interpreter, it worked out so great, my work has became more better. But then lately I thought oh why not try to have no interpreter for one day…….. Not good, why I think that it is not good for me to have no interpreter for a day or at all, because I never had no interpreter for about 5 years I think, so that was the first time in 5 years. I know that you will say oh it should be fine to have no accessibility for a day, I thought the same, but I was wrong.

Lately I went to Melbourne for WFDYS camp, had so much fun, and then I stayed another week at my friends’ house, to go to VCD school for a week. WOW it had so much impact on me because I’ve never been to a deaf school since I was 5 years old, so that means for 10 years I’ve been in mainstream school. I’ve forgotten what was like to be in a deaf school, and I only went to deaf school in TPS kindergarden. This was the best 2 weeks of my life because I never had full on deaf mode before in my life (yes, I have deaf family, but I meant that everyday meet with deaf people).

So as I came back home, I’ve forgot little of what’s like to be in hearing world and to be shy like I normally do at school everyday. I wanted to try to have no interpreter for a day, then It didn’t worked out for me. Now I know what feels like to have absouley no interpreter everyday only teacher of the deaf for few hours a week (I know that I only experienced for one day but I can expand it to a year or even a lifetime).

I’m trying to say that there are lots of deaf youth who never had accessibility in their school, and no one (even me) noticed the big problem of not having accessibility in their education, it would affect this deaf child’s future and identity. Not only deaf need accessibility, hearing people do need accessibility.