According to American Sign Language/English interpreter Laurie Shaffer, years ago, when she was teaching at a school for the deaf, a young deaf person asked her “What does the sun sound like?"

“I was so stunned by the question. I told her it was so far away that it didn’t make any sound, and she had trouble believing me. To her, the sun was so large and so powerful, she just could not imagine that it did not make a sound. This is when I started to understand  just how different my experience is from deaf people,” Shaffer said. “The way hearing people have treated deaf people is to deny deaf culture, or to try to eradicate it.” 

Shaffer, who is an assistant professor and the director of the ASL and interpreting program at UNH Manchester and has a doctorate in interpreting and translations studies from Gallaudet University, spoke the Monadnock Summer Lyceum Sunday about what she has learned about the experience of deaf and hearing-impaired people over three decades of interpreting from ASL to English. 

Sunday’s Lyceum was moderated by Nicole Cruz, who runs the ASL program at Memorial High School in Manchester. Jola Lindstrom provided the English interpretation for Cruz’s introduction, and Wendy Watson interpreted Shaffer’s talk in ASL for the audience. 

Shaffer was affected by the contrasting life experiences of her father, a college professor who was “hard of hearing,” and her mother, who was bilingual in English and French.

“My father did not use ASL, and he did not associate with deaf people. It impacted his career, and he was often frustrated and angry, and it is probably why he was forced to retire two years early. Meanwhile, my mother, who did her junior year in Paris, had her world opened by learning a new language,” Shaffer said. “Being unable to communicate has devastating effects.” 

Shaffer believes most people are unaware of the level of complexity in English/ASL translation.

“A lot of young people say they are interested in learning ASL, and they may imagine themselves interpreting at the United Nations, or on Broadway. But when it comes to working with real people, it is very complex mental task. Being an ASL interpreter may be one of the hardest things you can do,” Shaffer said. 

After 45 years working in the deaf community, first as a teacher and then as an interpreter, Shaffer sees access to interpretative services in medical settings as one of most-critical needs for deaf people. For seven years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Shaffer worked as an interpreter during the AIDS epidemic, and saw in real time how the lack of interpretive services can directly affect deaf people with medical needs. 

“During the AIDS epidemic, the FDA was coming out with new drug cocktail regimes all the time, and they were very complicated  and required complex instructions. I saw deaf people who could not get the services they needed fast enough to access the drugs they needed, or did not have adequate instructions or understanding for their care, and they died,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer traced the impact of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act and the later Affordable Care Act, which, while making a huge positive impacts on access to interpretative services for deaf people, have also had  unintended consequences. 

“Now, if a deaf person is at a doctor’s appointment and they do not have an experienced or quality interpreter, and they have to reschedule the appointment until they can get a better interpreter, that hospital gets ‘points’ for providing two interpretative sessions,” Shaffer said. “It is not about just checking that box and doing a ‘plug-and-play’ model. Deaf people need agency when it comes to access to quality interpreters. Instead of decisions being made for deaf people, they need to have a say in who their interpreter is. If they are left out of the process of choosing the interpreter, if they get a bad interpreter, it can be a disaster,” Shaffer said. “How is this happening 23 years after the ADA?” 

In the public comment session, Shaffer addressed the question of “how hearing people can help.” A member of the audience wrote on a comment card that deaf people “don’t appreciate being pushed to the side.”

“Please take the time to communicate with us. Please take the time to write something down, or however we can communicate,’ “ Shaffer read. “‘Work with us.  It’s OK to admit you don’t know how.” 

For information about the Monadnock Summer Lyceum, go to monadnocklyceum.org.