{"id":18976,"date":"2023-07-12T08:04:28","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T14:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/?p=18976"},"modified":"2024-01-16T12:12:16","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T19:12:16","slug":"a-word-on-accessibility-from-a-deaf-person-and-vp-of-brand-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/blog\/si\/a-word-on-accessibility-from-a-deaf-person-and-vp-of-brand-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"A Word on \u201cAccessibility\u201d From a Deaf Person and VP of Brand Marketing\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A word on \u201cAccessibility\u201d from a Deaf person and VP of Brand Marketing <\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Olivia Alvarez<\/a><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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by Ryan Commerson\u00a0<\/h3>

By the time I reached the age of 5, I understood that the world was not built for people like me. Most importantly, I had this gut feeling that it was nobody\u2019s fault. It wasn\u2019t until college that I learned a new word: ideology. Two eminent thinkers influenced how I \u201cget\u201d the world around me: Louis Althusser and Stuart Hall.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\u201cIdeology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.\u201d\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t- Louis Althusser <\/cite>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\u201cRace is more like a language than it is like the way in which we are biologically constituted.\u201d \t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t- Stuart Hall <\/cite>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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To quickly sum up what I have come to realize: Everything that I have read or what others have told me about what being deaf means are made up. One example: because I don\u2019t receive sound through ears does not necessarily mean that I cannot develop a language or a faculty for thinking.\u00a0<\/p>

Disability and Accessibility as Social Constructs\u00a0\u00a0<\/h3>

So, here we are, talking about accessibility. The notion of \u201cdisability\u201d and \u201caccessibility\u201d are also social constructs. The term \u201csocial construction\u201d is fancy jargon for the concept that everything that eight billion people created through language is just that: a creation. We made it all up. If we can take a moment and realize that life is essentially empty and meaningless…until humans came along and started producing language, and thus created meanings for pretty much everything in life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

It\u2019s not any one person\u2019s fault that not everyone knows sign language and that interpreting service is expensive. Or that, although it\u2019s possible to easily caption a regular phone call at high accuracy and speed with the help of the AI behind CaptionCall Mobile<\/a>, call captioning isn\u2019t universal. No one sat in a corner and came up with Machiavellian policies to deliberately make life difficult for some 16% of the world\u2019s population<\/a>\u00a0that have a \u201cdisability\u201d. Accessibility is actually just a word to describe an attempt to identify the engineering misconceptions resulting from thousands of years of ideological snowballing and \u201ccorrect\u201d them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Principles of Universal Design<\/h2>

Quite essentially, accessibility in its current state is an afterthought (or oversight). If we were to consider universal design in the engineering of products to make them responsive to as many representations of humanity as possible, then we could move beyond accessibility as a corrective action. Universal design factors the lived stories of billions of people into one story \u2013 uni: one, verse: story \u2013 and expresses it in a functional design for everyone.\u00a0<\/p>

We all design our environment based on what works for *us*. It is only natural. When we employ others who are unlike us to collectively develop designs, we achieve greater universality simply because we incorporate experience that we don\u2019t have.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Ramps for wheelchair users are not only enjoyed by them; they are immensely helpful to delivery people and parents with strollers. Captioning on television in public \u2014 for instance, in a loud restaurant or airport \u2014 is convenient and useful for more than Deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons. They are regarded as \u201caccessible\u201d only because the developers didn\u2019t consider those use cases in the design from the beginning. If design were universal at its core, would you point out \u201caccessibility\u201d features or simply call it sensible, smart, and efficient?\u00a0<\/p>

The Sorenson Approach: Connect Beyond Words\u00a0<\/h3>

At Sorenson, we make it our business to offer handcrafted, branded, and thoughtful solutions on a silver platter that integrate seamlessly into daily life and business. We employ diverse Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing people from all walks of life<\/a> to ensure that our products go beyond that concept of accessibility as a fix. And we do it so individuals can connect with each other, communities can connect across language and culture, and enterprises can connect with some of the $500 billion disposable income of \u201cdisabled\u201d Americans.<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A word on \u201cAccessibility\u201d from a Deaf person and VP of Brand Marketing Olivia Alvarez by Ryan Commerson\u00a0 By the time I reached the age of 5, I understood that the world was not built for people like me. Most importantly, I had this gut feeling that it was nobody\u2019s fault. It wasn\u2019t until college […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":19466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jet_sm_ready_style":"","_jet_sm_style":"","_jet_sm_controls_values":"","_jet_sm_fonts_collection":"","_jet_sm_fonts_links":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-si"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/es.sorenson.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}