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| Lydia Callis on the Brian Lehrer Show |
Sign language interpreter Lydia Callis appeared on The Brian Lehrer Show radio show over New York City's public radio station WNYC yesterday. Callis came into the spotlight when media outlets picked up on her demonstrative interpretations during press conferences of the mayor about Superstorm Sandy last year. There's a transcript of their chat
here. Here's an exempt where they discuss deaf in the workplace:
Lydia: When somebody meets a deaf person, for example if they come in for an interview or what not and they didn’t know that this person was deaf or hard of hearing, they don’t know what to do. And really the only difference between the hearing and deaf community is the fact that the deaf community communicates in a different way. And because of technologies these days they are able to work efficiently with other hearing people as well, such as having an interpreter, having email – you can communicate through email or texting through the phone – or by providing closed captioning as well. One of the great things that they have these days is something called the video phone. You can just provide a video phone for the deaf community or somebody that is deaf at their desk. And they can just turn on the video phone and they can call the deaf person – the hearing person can call the deaf person and it would go into a call center full of sign language interpreters that are trained there, ready to go, and the interpreter will be able to voice for the deaf person if they can’t speak themselves. And they’ll be able to sign what the hearing person Is trying to communicate with them and it’s right there.
