Autumn Access in Classroom

Sep 30, 2020

Video description: https://tinyurl.com/tasmouv

DESCRIPTION:

In a large room in a brick industrial-style building, a young woman has long brown hair and wears dark-rimmed glasses and a black t-shirt. She has a thin chain around her neck with a polished grey and brown stone attached.

TEXT: Access in Classroom. Autumn Moder.

A thick green rectangular border frames Autumn and a circular logo has a green flower-like leaf and bud.

Autumn sits in a chair near two large windows and a white lounge. She uses sign language.

AUTUMN:

So, my worst experience ever was watching music videos in my Intimate Relationships class. Some videos were about love or heartbreak or whatever, that’s not the point. One day, I had a substitute interpreter. I felt so bad for her! We ended up making a joke out of it, but I still felt bad! The slow songs were fine, but others were rap she did not know at all. I told her she didn’t have to interpret the songs, but she at least wanted to try her best. The instructor said it was so fun to watch the interpreter, that we should always watch without captions.

After class, I had to tell the teacher, “That wasn’t cool. It’s not fair, because I didn’t even learn anything today.” It was frustrating having to approach the teacher like that. I know it can’t impact my grade, but I don’t want them to have a negative view of me because I need them to help me. Sometimes people forget because they just think, “Autumn looks like everyone else,” but no, I need accommodations and want to make sure they are aware I can’t hear.

I’ve been accused of lying about it. No, it’s a real thing. It’s a hidden struggle because sometimes people don’t realize that I’m actually deaf. I do need help. It’s not like I can understand speech independently. It may look easy to lipread, but I’m guessing at what I miss and can’t maintain lipreading for very long. Lipreading only captures about 30% of the alphabet, so it’s really not possible to keep up.

DESCRIPTION:

NDC logo. Black text beneath it reads nationaldeafcenter.org