How Access to ASL Transformed My Life

Growing up as a mainstreamed deaf child in a public school with all hearing peers, I was lonely. I had a communication barrier in a language I knew. I knew all the words to say, all the words to write, but I couldn’t hear a lot of the words said to me. 

Despite having a deaf mother, I did not have access to ASL (American Sign Language). She grew up mainstream in Germany, so she did not have access to DGS (German Sign Language). When she moved to the United States with my American dad, she did not learn American Sign Language. She only spoke German and English.

When we learned of my hearing loss as a child, life went on as if we never got a diagnosis at all. I didn’t get hearing aids. I was never enrolled in the local deaf school. I didn’t have any access to ASL. It’s almost as if we were all pretending there wasn’t anything wrong with my hearing. Well, okay, I was a kid, so I didn’t care about anything other than Sailor Moon and Pokemon. Deafness wasn’t really something I comprehended.

But as I got older, the hearing loss became more apparent and more of an obstacle. 

I got picked on sometimes by other students when I responded to things with words that I guess didn’t correlate to what they were saying. I couldn’t keep up with conversations in the classroom or cafeteria. One person’s late mother thought I disliked her, but it was really just that I never understood everything she said. I always experienced Dinner Table Syndrome during family dinners in all of my relationships. 

During the early years of my content-creating career, I was at the point where I was being invited to conferences like VidCon and Playlist Live, as well as smaller business conferences. My fellow content-creating friends were also featured creators there. The experience of sitting in these conference panels was similar to sitting in classrooms. I could hear and understand that there was noise and things being said, but I had no idea what was being said. I could not be involved in my friends’ panels like everyone else was … until ASL interpreters started being hired when I could finally use them.

A little over a decade ago, I started to find out more about the Deaf community and ASL in hopes that I could meet these people online and feel less alone. As years went by, I met people in the Deaf community in various cities and my ASL slowly improved. Even in my first week of experiencing the Deaf community and ASL for the first time, I felt more comfortable socially than with anyone else. Sure, I was nervous because of my lack of knowledge, but they understood how I felt and made sure I knew that it was okay to feel how I felt and not to worry around them.

When I was able to use ASL interpreters at conferences, I became so much more involved. I was engaged in panels and workshops, learning how my friends grew their content and more about their life. I got to experience personal conversations during lunch breaks and in the green room. 

In October 2022, a friend of mine who is a musician had his first solo show. I flew out to see him and support him. When the venue wouldn’t provide the ASL interpreter I requested, my friend paid for one out of his own pocket. I already knew the words to his songs, and recognized the music with my newly acquired hearing aids in, but having ASL interpreters on stage got me more involved. I got to be in on the jokes that were said. 

I moved to Omaha, Nebraska in the summer of 2023. Before that, I grew up in North Carolina in the middle of Asheville and Charlotte for most of my life. In North Carolina, there weren’t a lot of interpreters available at events I wanted to go to. Most of the people I knew didn’t know ASL. I knew some people from the local Deaf community, but it was people a lot older than me or the students from the Deaf school. It was hard to find a connection.

In Omaha, it was completely different. The Deaf community here is much larger and with more variety in ages, so there’s a lot of people here around my age. So many more events here are accessible with ASL interpreters. 

Just this past weekend, I went to see the play adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery for the first time. I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it as much as I did without them. My Deaf friends and I got to enjoy so many shows and events at the park downtown and elsewhere in the city because of that access. 

I got to learn from workshops at the co-working space I’m a member of, and at business conferences and events I was invited to attend. I was able to network with other business owners more efficiently. Having ASL interpreters in the same room as other business owners helped them realize that Deaf people exist and they had their own work to do in making their businesses accessible. 

Having access to language, information, and people makes all the difference in the world. While my hearing aids have helped me out tremendously since getting them three years ago, they are not perfect. There is still so much that I miss when people move around, turn around, and I can’t attempt to read their lips. There’s too much noise in the background. It’s too dark around the person speaking. Having ASL, despite that I am not fluent, gives me more access even if I don’t know the sign. All I have to do is ask what the sign is and they can fingerspell it for me. 

ASL gave me friends, community, and work. It gave me a life. I truly don’t know where I would be without the ASL I have in my life and I hope that the people reading this essay take these words and use them to bring more ASL accessibility into everyone’s lives.