Deaf Services

Finding a job is hard. Keeping a job once you’ve found one can be just as hard. I know how difficult these things can be firsthand, but until recently I’d never considered just how much more difficult they could be. I have spent a lot of time mulling over all sorts of privilege, but it was shocking to realize just how complacent I’d been in my own abled privilege. What if a prospective employer wrote me off immediately because they assumed I was incompetent due to a disability? What if that same employer wrote me off just because my presence made them uncomfortable? These are only a couple of the difficulties faced by PWDs (People With a Disability), but each disability comes with its own difficulties as well. What if, for example, I was perfectly qualified for a job but lost it because I couldn’t communicate with an employer who would rather take someone less qualified than expend any effort on communication? The difficulty of working or even living in an environment where communication is difficult or impossible was brought to my attention when I spoke with the women in the La Amiga program, but it applies to another group as well – the deaf.

One reason my abled privilege took so long to dawn on me, at least where deaf people are concerned, is that none of the deaf people I have ever met – admittedly not many – seemed “disabled.” In fact when left to their own devices or among other deaf people they got by just as well as anyone else. Sure, they couldn’t hear, but they had access to a sophisticated visual language capable of conveying just as much specificity and meaning as any vocal one, and in a culture as literate and digital as ours what else would a person really need hearing for other than speaking with hearing people? The only time the deaf people I knew seemed frustrated or ill-equipped was when they had to do that very thing, and even then their difficulties more closely resembled those of a foreigner than a PWD*.

Still, calling interaction with the hearing a deaf person’s “only” difficulty is a bit of a mischaracterization – they live every day of their lives in a culture built by and for hearing people who communicate through sound. If they’re lucky enough to live in a town of any size they will have access to a community of other deaf people to communicate with, but otherwise virtually everyone they meet, from cashiers to judges to mothers to friends, will not understand them or be understood by them. Also, because most of the social and emotional aspects of human communication are non-verbal and visual, they will be able to pick up on the annoyance, confusion, impatience, or pity in hearing people they try to communicate with.


This is unfortunate because no matter how competent a person is otherwise, a stumbling block this size can have drastic effects on their self-esteem and confidence, and once those are taken away self determination becomes almost impossible. Almost impossible and completely impossible aren’t the same however, and the Partnership is one of many groups across the country that offers services to help deaf people find employment, live independently, and regain and maintain confidence in their own abilities.

One such case is Olga Olegovna Sidlinskiy, a 17-year old daughter of a family of Russian immigrants, and one of nine children. She is the only member of her family who is deaf but even so, when her father became unemployed and her working-age siblings got jobs to support the family, Olga – who had never worked before - decided that it was only right to pitch in. However, she wasn’t sure what to do or how to do it until a staff member at the Harvest Christian Academy for the Deaf in Ringgold directed her to Sharon Bryant and the Partnership’s deaf services program.

It’s important to remember that deaf services, just like all of the Partnership’s other programs, works first and foremost to make it so that people won’t "need" help – empowering people to build better lives again. It would probably be easier (and cheaper) to hand people like Olga a proverbial fish and send them on their way, but they need to be fed for the rest of their lives. So Sharon opened her tackle box and got to work.

She helped Olga put together a resume, explained how the interview process works, and helped facilitate communication between Olga and her potential employers. Olga then went on, despite the abysmal state of the job market, to find work at an Olive Garden where her manager has nothing but praise for her and she is actually teaching her coworkers some signing. Like the other 36+ clients Sharon has helped in her two and a half years with the Partnership, Olga now has more than a job. She has something that most of the rest of us take advantage of every day: self determination.

*Speaking slower and louder works about as well on a deaf person as it does on, say, a Parisian, and it generally elicits the same reaction.