Video Phones and Their Effects on Culture Norms

I came upon this wonderful insight given by a well-known Minnesota Deaf woman, Cara Barnett, about technology and how it has affected Deaf culture.

Now I want to talk a little about the relationship between Deaf culture and technology. In terms of communication, Deaf people have progressed from nothing like TTYs through TTYs to e-mails and pagers. Now videophones have come on the scene. These changes have really had a strong impact on Deaf culture and the Deaf community.

Prior to TTYs, Deaf people had to rely on their hearing neighbors to make phone calls which both required assertiveness and led to a sense of dependence. With the invention of TTYs, Deaf people were able to call for their own appointments, though when talking with friends, it was
preferred to talk face to face in ASL, rather than on the TTY.

Pagers were the next development that really allowed Deaf people to make contact in emergency situations, or set up times for meetings, just like hearing people do with their cell phones. This was a great development.

A few years ago, the video phone came to the Deaf community. At first, people weren’t sure about it. But once they experienced using it,they loved it. Using the Video Relay Service, Deaf people were able to make calls using ASL and working through an interpreter instead of having to struggle with figuring out how to convey things in written English. It was much easier to let the interpreters do the work of going between languages.

But you don’t only have to use a videophone to call the Video Relay Service. You can also call Deaf friends directly. I come from a Deaf family, and my parents and I have an agreed-upon time to talk to each other on the videophone. On Sundays at 11 am, we call, and the calls go for an hour or even an hour and a half. My mom makes a list of things she wants to tell me, which can be a lot to take in. Sometimes I have a list of things, too, but generally, it’s my mom who does that.

Because of this, I noticed an interesting change at Christmas time. In years past, when Deaf families got together at Christmas, they would talk into the night. This year, however, when I got together with my family, I ran out of things to say after just a short time. My mom kept urging me to tell her more, but I realized that with the videophone, I had given her the news every week, so that I didn’t have as much to say at Christmas this year. I shared that insight with her how having the videophone changed our Christmas interaction.

It makes me wonder what will happen to Deaf culture. In the past, culturally Deaf people have always stayed late talking at the Deaf club or at Deaf parties. With the advent of the videophone, I wonder if that will now change and people won’t feel like they need to catch up as much because they already know what is happening with people from videophone conversations. It’s too early to tell at this point, but it will be very interesting to see what the impact of the videophone will be on Deaf culture in the future.