Deaf Technology Essay

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Recommended: Deaf education and technology

Technology is something that seems to bring people together, but in reality can bring people farther away when technology not optimized for certain groups. Many groups are left out of new technology, especially the deaf and elderly. These groups deserve technology just as much as people the technology is originally geared towards. Technology is meant to bring people closer together not isolate groups from each other. However, despite the technology not being fully optimized for these groups, it has had some advances in the past years. These include facetime and text messaging for the deaf community and the ability to customize the phone to make it easier for the elderly to read and use.
Looking first at the deaf community, the phone was originally damaging as phones only utilize the use of hearing. When phones became prominent in homes, the entire community was left out, unable to communicate the way it seemed everyone else could. This
On a deaf community blog known as Deaf Voice, an anonymous user stated, “Still, the limited bandwidth poses clarity issues in video chat sessions, with an uninterrupted, streaming feed necessary in order for sign language to be properly interpreted back and forth. Not to mention, small screens and limited picture quality make the process difficult.” With the progress up until this point, the companies should take this into account and make the effort to give the deaf and hard of hearing communities as much of a chance to communicate as hearing people. Various phone companies, including Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, currently have a plan geared towards the deaf which does not include calling but instead allows texting and facetime. Even so, these plans are not what it should be. Often they overcharge for data or force the customers to prove they are deaf. The companies should aim to fix these problems and be more helpful to a community that physically will not use a calling

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