Creative Media Group Project Blog # 7 - 28/11/17

Meeting with DeafHear

First off, we just found out that a member of our team, Vanessa Hernadez has dropped out of college and is no longer part of our team. I was sad to hear this but it has certain benefits. We were told that teams of 5 would be marked harsher as they would expect a better project. So at least the pressure of that is off. The other thing is that I know have a better chance to contribute to the group by filling Vanessa’s shoes.

None of us really knew what to expect going into DearHear. Our team met up outside the DeafHear building and we were made feel really welcome going into the interview. We met with 3 of the workers there. One of them was deaf and one of the others translated. The introduced themselves speaking while signing ASL. There was a bit of silence and then Sophie decided to introduce herself by spelling out her name in sign language. We all did the same and the workers seemed really impressed we went in with some knowledge of the ASL language. We only had around 6 topics that we wanted to bring up but we ended up chatting for over an hour about everything. What to focus more on, any difficulties people who are hard of hearing may have that aren’t commonly knew, the best way to go about the project, etc. Then afterwards they gave us a tour of the type of technology that deaf people would use. Everything from alarms, to headphones, recording devices, to mobile phones. There was some much useful/interesting information that we were given that I wouldn’t be able to write it down without rambling on. We made sure to record the entire conversation for future use.

Originally we were going to make a mobile app that is targeted towards kids that teach them the basics of ASL and bring awareness to those hard of hearing. But after discussing everything with the DeafHear workers, we are now bring our focus in a direction that needs to be addressed. We are now aiming to build a website that targets adults. It will teach important phrases for emergency situations. Such as a doctor/police officer/fire fighter describing to a deaf person the situation, like taking blood pressure or telling them to breathe calmly, etc. As well as this, some important tips that could benefit everyone when speaking to the hard of hearing. For example, if you are trying to get a deaf person’s attention without them seeing you, there are signals they recognise that would otherwise be considered rude to average people. Signals like kicking the ground once or twice to send vibrations through the floor or quickly switching a light on and off to get the attention of anyone in the room.

We came out of the DeafHear building knowing exactly what we need to do and we have no more worries about the presentation and report that are due next week.