The new year brings a fresh start to our lives; it’s a natural time to reflect on the year past and make plans for the coming year. In The Mind Hears New Year tradition, we have updated our list of recommendations for making your workplace accessible and refined the layout of the recommendations. You can view and download the full list of recommendations for making your workplaces (in-person, hybrid and remote) accessible for your deaf and hard of hearing colleagues at this link. Below we provide an outline of the best approaches for increasing workplace accessibility and provide links to blog posts that explore particular aspects in detail.
Universally design your workplace: Our spaces become more inclusive for all when we improve access for any subgroup of our community. Consequently, by increasing the accessibility of our workplaces for our deaf and hard-of-hearing (HoH) colleagues, we create a better workplace for everyone. This includes hearing folks who have auditory processing disorder, use English as their second language, or are acquiring hearing loss during their careers. Chances are that someone in your department has hearing loss, whether they’ve disclosed this or not, and will benefit from your efforts to make your workplace more accessible (see The Mind Hears blog post about where are all the deaf and hard of hearing academics). This is why you should universally design your workplace now and not wait until someone who is struggling asks you to make modifications.
Sharing the work: With a google search you can find several resources on workplace accessibility for deaf/HoH employees, such as the Hearing Loss Association of America’s (HLAA) very usefulemployment toolkit. One drawback of these resources is that nearly all of the suggestions are framed as actions for the deaf/HoH employee. While deaf and hard of hearing academics need to be strong self-advocates and take steps to improve their accommodations, our hearing colleagues can help us tremendously by sharing the work to create accessible workplaces. Speech reading conversations, planning accommodations, and making sure that technology/accommodations work as intended is never-ending and exhausting labor that we do above and beyond our teaching, research, and service. Your understanding and your help can make a large impact. For example, if a speaker doesn’t repeat a question they were asked, ask them to repeat even if you heard the question just fine. The people who didn’t hear the question are already stressed and fatigued from working hard to listen, so why expect them to do the added work of asking speakers to repeat? (see The Mind Hears blog post on listening fatigue). Repeating the question benefits everyone. The changes you make today can also help your workplace align with equal opportunity requirements for best hiring practices (see The Mind Hears blog posts about applying for jobs when deaf/HoH here and here). The Mind Hears coordinated the listing of advice for different academic settings below to help you become better allies today.
One size doesn’t fit all: If a participant requests accommodation for a presentation or meeting, follow up with them and be prepared to iterate to a solution that works. It may be signed interpreters (there are different kinds of signing), oral interpreters, CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation), or Assistive Listening Devices(formerly called FM systems). It could be rearranging the room or modifying the way that the meeting is run. Keep in mind that what works for one deaf/HoH person may not work for another person with similar deafness. And what works for someone in one situation may not work at all for that same person in another situation, even if these seem similar to you. The best solution will probably not be the first approach that you try nor may it be the quickest or cheapest approach; it will be the one that allows your deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues to participate fully and contribute to the discussion. Reaching the goal of achieving an academic workplace accessible to deaf/HoH academics is a journey.
I had the honor of writing an essay for Uncharted-Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias, Edited by Skylar Bayer and Gabi Serrato Marks. With permission from Columbia University Press, here is the essay – Michele
The moment I get to my office desk, I take off my hearing aids. As I do so, the world around me softens. Gone are footsteps, hallway chit-chat, brushing clothes and papers. Now I can finally focus.
With my hearing aids, the world’s sounds are harsh. High- frequency sounds that I can’t usually hear are amplified by hearing aids. Hearing aids make all the frequencies of speech louder than my hearing thresholds, which vary with sound frequency: high-frequency sounds need to be extremely loud for me to hear them. For example, I don’t hear birds or the difference between “M” and “N,” and while I can hear some vacuum cleaner noise, this sound is soft and easy for me to ignore. I’m often amazed that these two tiny machines that fit behind my ears can amplify all these sounds. But the most amazing part of the hearing system is the brain. How does my brain process all the incoming acoustic information compressed into the narrow volume range of my hearing? I don’t know. I’m a physical scientist and have no idea how my brain operates, but whatever my brain is doing must be very hard work. For example, distinguish- ing the “T” and “F” sounds from the background noise of fans or cars passing by, which is critical for understanding speech, drains my energy. After an hour of listening, I start to drift away from the discussion. I experience listening fatigue.
Because my job as a professor at a primarily hearing insti- tution involves a lot of oral communication, I have to manage listening fatigue every day. Consequently, any time that I am not required to listen, I pull off my hearing aids and put them on the desk. Immediately, the world becomes more familiar. My shoulders relax—I am home. In the gentle world of my natu- ral hearing, my energies can shift from the challenging chore of listening to other tasks that I enjoy. I no longer have to work to distinguish speech from background noise and carefully speech- read to fill in the gaps in my understanding. I can spend my energy on science. I can be my authentic deaf self.
illustration by Tiffany Chen
I didn’t always think of myself as deaf or disabled. Before graduate school, I used to say that I was “hearing impaired.” This identity aligns with the medical model of disability, which focuses on the deficit within the individual’s body or mind. I was diagnosed with sensorial-neural bilateral hearing loss in kindergarten when a savvy teacher noticed that I was speech- reading her. This was back in the 1970s, before routine early childhood hearing screening. The revelation of my hearing loss triggered many years of appointments with audiologists, surgeons, and speech therapists, who were paid to try to make me adapt to and function more easily within the hearing world. These medical professionals perceive our disabled bodies and minds as deficient, and so our medical diagnoses deliver to us our first identities based on the medical model of disability.
But what happens when we flip the medical model around? Instead of changing me to become more hearing, what if we change the environment to become less disabling? This is the social model of disability, which posits that environments can be disabling to people. I was introduced to this model of disability in graduate school when I met other deaf and disabled people. Through those transformative conversations, I learned to recognize disabling environments. Lectures in dark rooms are disabling to me. Noisy conference poster halls are disabling to me. This shift in thinking empowered me to let go of “hearing impaired” as my identity and embrace being part-deaf; the label “hard of hearing” has never sat well with me. To me, “hard of hearing” emphasizes the hard work that I need to do to pass as hearing, while “deaf ” and “disabled” emphasize my perspective on life and on science.
This shift in disability identity also maps onto how I use assistive technology. Audiologists always instruct me to wear my hearing aids for all waking hours to train my brain to process the new sounds. They have tried scolding me for not wearing my hearing aids enough. The medical expectation that I be as hearing as possible sets me up for constant failure because I will never be hearing. Instead of striving to be hearing, I choose deafness whenever I can. At the same time, I choose to use technology when I need to interact with hearing people who don’t know how to communicate with deaf folks. At work, I use hear- ing aids, assistive listening devices, and transcription software to make communication with hearing colleagues less disabling.
By taking my hearing aids out and putting them on my desk, I become my authentic self, who happens not to hear birds or sharp consonants. My authentic self enjoys thinking about how faults in the Earth’s crust evolve over time. My authentic self enjoys setting up laboratory and numerical experiments where my graduate students and I test the impact of various processes on fault evolution. My authentic self enjoys coding and developing new software tools to explore fault system evolution. My authentic self loves working with graduate students to figure out why their laboratory or numerical models didn’t produce the expected results. My authentic self also has terrible drawing skills and enjoys being in the woods. In my authentic world, I can focus and work: composing articulate emails, coding scripts to analyze data in new ways, and crafting papers or proposals. My hearing aids are tools to help me interact with people around me, but they are not part of my identity as a scientist or as a person.
I recently read Jillian Weise’s piece “Common Cyborg” in Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility, which refers to disabled people who use technology to navigate the world as cyborgs.1 What an interesting idea! I grew up watching science fiction shows and admired cyborgs, such as the Bionic Woman and later Geordi from Star Trek Next Generation. In every episode of The Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers saves the day with her badass bionic hearing skills. While my hearing aids don’t give me badass hear- ing, they are similar to Geordi La Forge’s visor, which gives him enough vision that he can operate as if he were sighted. Folks on the Enterprise don’t act weird about his visor and value Geordi as a fully contributing member of the team. However, these television cyborg role models hardly ever remove their technology. They portray a message that our technology improves us. With technology we might be able to contribute to the team or save the day, but without technology we are far less valuable. This thinking arises from the medical model of disability.
My hearing aids are like my car; I appreciate being able to travel places without being out in the elements, but I don’t love driving, and I’m not dependent on my car to go everywhere. I do take better care of my hearing aids than I do my car—I dress them up with blue glitter ear molds. On the few occasions when I’ve misplaced my hearing aids or run out of batteries, I feel that something’s amiss, as if a helpful friend that I’ve come to rely on isn’t there for me. This has happened before teaching a few times. Teaching is a time when modulating my speech and hearing student questions and comments is important—at least within a classroom of hearing students. I could cancel my class. I could announce, “The instructor is not able to teach today.” But that isn’t quite right. I am able to teach; it will just be different. Although I miss that dear friend, I can rely on myself.
In both instances that I ran out of batteries before class, I proceeded with my lectures and explained to the class that I would be deafer than usual that day. Was the science that I taught that day of lower quality? Did the equations that govern the physics of rock deformation lose their magical power of relating regional contraction to uplift of the Earth’s crust? No. I still guided a discussion of the material even though my speech was probably blurry. The students still asked great questions, even if they had to repeat themselves and speak clearly (no mumbling!). In a way, isn’t this the ideal social model of disability? Instead of expecting me to strive to be a hearing professor, why not expect that each of us makes the classroom less disabling to one another? In this way, we can stumble together toward universal design and inclusion.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields valorize ability. We applaud accomplishments and grade perceived effort and outcomes. We often glorify long hours at the lab bench, at the computer terminal, and in the field. The ability to orally deliver clear and impactful treatises on esoteric processes is the hallmark of an accomplished scientist. When I realized that I would have to teach without my hearing aids, my own internalized ableism was appalled. How dare I expect students to accommodate my hearing impairment!? How dare I appear as a flawed instructor instead of perpetuating the image of the all-knowing and influential scientist!? By teaching without my hearing aids, I risk invalidating my role as an instructor. How dare I appear
Flawed
Weak
Deficient
Disabled
Human?
I reject the supposition that scientists need to be perceived as invulnerable. By disclosing our differences and vulnerabilities, we show students that people, rather than facts, are the heart of the STEM enterprise. Additionally, mainstream STEM culture can learn from disabled scientists. Our approaches, with or without cyborg enhancement, expand the narrow definition of who can be a scientist and expand the traditional ways to do science. For example, one of the best oral science presentations I ever attended was delivered by a colleague with a pronounced stutter. He used visuals in creative ways so that he didn’t have to rely on his speech. I learned from him how to employ visuals in my own talks to make them understood by a wider audience. These crip hacks (life hacks, but for disabled folks) that we employ leverage our dis- abled experiences to make science more accessible. Not only does STEM need to include more disabled scientists among our ranks, but STEM also needs to pay attention to how we are radically changing the ways that we do science to make it less disabling.
Am I less of a scientist when my hearing aids rest on my desk? Without my hearing aids, I am an innovative scientist exploring the evolution of faults within the Earth’s crust while also eroding the disabling nature of science.
NOTE
1. Jillian Weise, “Common Cyborg,” in Disability Visibility, ed. Alice Wong (New York: Vintage, 2020), 63–74
Excerpted from Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias, Edited by Skylar Bayer and Gabi Serrato Marks, published by Columbia University Press. Copyright (c) 2023 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
“On your faculty job application, don’t say that you have hearing loss ‘cause, you know… you function just fine.”
Enmeshed within this well-meaning advice to me years ago were layers and layers of ableism about expectations of a successful faculty member and (mis)perceptions of hearing loss and disability. At the time, my naivety about the academic hiring process and my feelings of being an imposter prevented me from offering a counter-narrative to this ableist advice. At the time, I thought:
“I function just fine. I can pass as hearing and be successful.”
Years ago, the well-intentioned job application advice fed my internalized ableism with the message that if I just worked hard enough to pass as hearing, I would be judged as equal to my hearing peers. Now I find that dance tiresome. Experience has taught me a lot about the costs associated with trying to pass as hearing. With the distance of time and the, this is what I would now say to that well-intentioned job application advice.
“You perceive me to be functioning just fine because you don’t notice me bluffing during group conversations or when there is background noise. You don’t hear my loud gasp and sigh when I can finally take off my hearing aids to free my achy ears and I no longer have to exert myself to listen. You aren’t aware of how hard I work to pronounce the sounds that I learned through years of speech therapy and the anxiety that I carry about the elocution of my voice. You don’t see the fatigue that accrues from days with many meetings. You don’t know how I carefully manage my days to allow for listening breaks and to avoid more than 3 hours of intense listening per day. “
The expectation that disabled people are only successful when they can pass as abled is one form of ableism. This thinking leads to expectations that disabled people who are successful are those who don’t need ‘special’ considerations or accommodations. These misperceptions about disability are particularly rampant within STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields such as my own.
A study by Atchison and Libarkin (2016) analyzed the perceptions of abled scientists about disability. They asked geoscience professionals if they thought that folks with various disabilities (hearing, moderate physical, severe mobility, learning and visual ) could succeed in geoscience careers. About 75% of respondents thought that a career in geosciences was viable for deaf/HoH people. That means that 1 in 4 people on a hiring committee probably don’t think that I can do my job. Atchinson and Libarkin (2016) also asked about specific tasks. Apparently, only ~40% of the survey respondents thought that deaf/HoH faculty can teach effectively. That means that 2 out of 5 faculty hiring committee members think that I can’t teach. While these results are sobering, the findings for geoscience career viability for folks with low vision and mobility impairments were far, far worse that the perceptions for deaf/HoH folks. These ableists views about the success of disabled folks in STEM pervade how we teach students, how we judge graduate school applications and the advice that we give job seekers.
It has been several decades since I was given the advice not to disclose my hearing loss on a job application and since that time I was hired, gained tenure and promotion to full Professor. My research group, supported by federal external grants, has gotten the opportunity to investigate some really cool questions about the evolution of faults in the Earth’s crust and to collaborate with amazing researchers around the world. As a disabled person, I value the interdependence of research collaborations – we each have our strengths and fill in for each other when needed. The predominantly hearing students in my courses report enjoying those courses and appreciating my inclusive teaching style. Students engage with course material via multiple modes, and many aspects of my courses are malleable so that we can adjust to the needs of folks. By designing courses that would work better for me as a former disabled college student, I’ve developed courses that work better for a lot of other folks as well.
I function just fine as a faculty member because of (not in spite of) my disability.
Our potential for success as deaf/HoH faculty members should not be measured by our ability to pass as hearing. While this strategy might protect a few of us from the bias of gatekeepers, a more impactful path is for the perceptions of disabled deaf/HoH academics to change. By shifting general perceptions of what success looks like for disabled academics, we can start to create more diverse and inclusive learning and research communities.
References Atchison, C.L. and Libarkin, J.C., 2016. Professionally held perceptions about the accessibility of the geosciences. Geosphere, 12(4), pp.1154-1165. https://doi.org/10.1130/GES01264.1
Location: Georgetown University/NIH, Washington DC
Twitter: @meganmajocha,
LinkedIn: Megan Majocha
Tell us about your background?
I am third generation deaf, and I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA. My parents are deaf, and my sister and brother are CODA (Children of Deaf Adults). I attended Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and Plum Senior High School. I had an interpreter while attending Plum for half of the day, and most of my classes at Plum were science-related! I went to Gallaudet University and graduated with a B.S. degree in Biology in 2018. I was a part of the Deaf Scientist Training Program in the Hunter Lab during my one-year post-baccalaureate fellowship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), right after graduation. After completing my fellowship in 2019, I joined the Georgetown/NIH Graduate Partnership Program to do my PhD in Tumor Biology.
How did you get to where you are?
I have always loved science and knew I wanted to do something with science, but I didn’t decide which field until college. I enjoyed genetics, and it was my favorite undergraduate class. I did a summer internship at Magee Women’s Research Institute studying reproductive biology after my first year of undergrad. I realized I loved doing basic science research, so I started leaning toward finding opportunities in the biomedical sciences field. It wasn’t until my post-baccalaureate fellowship at the NCI that I became intrigued by cancer research. Genetics is involved in cancer, and I was able to use my genetics knowledge which was a bonus for me! I knew I wanted to pursue a higher degree in cancer biology to understand the complexity of cancer and its mechanisms. I loved the freedom to form my research questions and ideas, and knew that going for a PhD is one of the ways to do so.
What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness?
My biggest professional challenge has been finding interpreters who specialize in STEM. They are so hard to find. I was fortunate to meet a few scientifically trained interpreters in the lab at NCI. However, when it was time to start my first year as a PhD student at Georgetown, I was worried about finding qualified interpreters who have some experience in STEM. It was critical that I have consistent interpreters for my classes and lab work throughout the week. I did not want different interpreters assigned to me each day as it would be challenging for them to become familiar with my coursework and research. I wanted to be able to focus on my coursework and research, rather than teaching new interpreters signs and phrases all over again each time. I was fortunate to meet my team of interpreters who picked up science signs and became super familiar with my research, which was helpful. I have about 5-6 preferred scientific interpreters on my list, and I have them on-call full day the entire week, depending on their availability. However, I usually make sure I have two of my primary interpreters available to interpret for critical meetings, like my thesis committee meeting or presentations. The university accommodated me in so many ways, for which I’m very grateful.
What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?
I have at least one on-call interpreter in the lab daily from 9-5 pm. Sometimes there are two interpreters, depending on how heavy the meetings are on each day. The interpreters are aware of lab safety requirements prior to interpreting in the lab, and they have their own space in the lab, so they are always accessible. Suppose my colleagues are having a conversation in the lab and the interpreter can cover the conversation, then I am aware of what is being said instead of being left out. I can also use the on-call lab interpreter if I have a last-minute meeting or want to discuss my data with my PI or other lab members.
What advice would you give your former self?
Don’t be afraid to try new things and grab every opportunity given to you. Start networking early by reaching out to people in different fields and learning about what they do. Most importantly, life and work balance!
Any funny stories you want to share?
It was one long, dreadful day and one of my interpreters accidentally signed “farm” instead of “pharm”, which is short for pharmacology. Although they quickly corrected themselves, my interpreter and I still laugh about it to this day.
Deaf and hard of hearing faculty often lack role models or colleagues to talk with about the challenges of navigating a career with hearing loss. This isolation can be pronounced when we work at institutions that serve hearing students. This isolation often results in us developing or failing to develop solutions on our own and, in many cases, reinventing wheels that others have already developed. Broadening the mutual mentoring network of deaf and hard of hearing faculty will reduce our isolation and facilitate sharing of strategies for success. The Mind Hears has been creating community and providing a peer-mentoring platform through our blog posts since 2018. We recently hosted two on-line open house sessions in September 2022 and April 2023 to provide an opportunity for folks to meet and communicate with other deaf or hard of hearing faculty in real time. In this post, we will share what worked well in these sessions and some of the participant feedback.
Some participants form the April open house
Who attended our open house sessions?
We advertised our open house sessions as virtual coffee hour drop-ins on Twitter, The Mind Hears platform itself, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We also emailed invitations directly to some prior blog contributors. We planned the events for 1.5 hours, at a time that we hoped would work for multiple countries. We chose Zoom as the platform and set up the meeting to require pre-registration. Funding for the drop-in sessions was provided through a minigrant from AccessADVANCE, an NSF funded project at the University of Washington to increase the participation and advancement of women with disabilities in academic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers. We had ~15 attendees in September and ~10 attendees in April, including The Mind Hears co-founders, Ana and Michele, and The Mind Hears social media director, Stephanie. The remaining attendees ranged from postdoctoral researchers to administrators to faculty from a variety of institutions in the US and UK
Full communication Access
Our highest priority was ensuring that every person was able to participate fully in the conversations. For the first open house, we provided two ASL (American Sign Language) interpreters and used live auto-captions built into Zoom. The auto-captions did not work well for all accents, and for the April open house we added CART (Caption Access Real Time) transcription along with ASL interpreters and zoom auto-captions. We also made abundant use of the zoom chat features for comments and side conversations. Participants in the more recent session reported a variety of preferences for communication – some preferred the auto-captions, some preferred CART, and some preferred ASL interpreters for the spoken part of the conversations. Even though auto-captions are not as accurate as CART transcription, some preferred auto-captions because it has less lag time than CART and the words can be placed near the video of the person speaking to augment speech reading. This taught us that successful on-line meetings of deaf and hard of hearing people should have both CART and auto-captions along with signed language interpreters.
Another element to providing accessible conversation was to allow pauses during the discussion. This allows interpreters and CART to catch up and gives everyone a bit of time to process language inputs. We did a better job of this in the April open house than the September open house, which had also included more people and a faster paced conversation. When conversation pace was too fast, some folks used the chat function to engage others in side conversations – this meant that there were two conversations going on at once. In the slower paced April meeting, comments added to the chat were incorporated into the main discussion, which allowed everyone to follow the primary conversation.
What people reported getting out of the open house sessions
The participants (~15 in Sept and ~10 in April) attended to find networking opportunities and a chance to share lived experiences and support each other. The sessions were both 90 minutes long and while we invited folks to come and go as their schedule permits, nearly all participants stayed for the entire session. Conversations ranged from transcription software recommendations, to deaf identity, to learning signed languages, etc. Feedback from participants indicated that they felt supported, listened to, valued and optimistic.
Going forward
For both sessions we prepared some question prompts beforehand, but found that conversation flowing naturally after a round of introductions. Participants reported excitement at being able to share conversation topics that were not as readily shared with their hearing colleagues. Future sessions might focus on particular pre-selected topics or spotlight a profiled person. We would also like to increase international participation, which might mean expanding both spoken and signed languages.
We welcome ideas for future topics of discussion in our open houses, or further modifications to content and form. If there is something that you would like to talk about or have other ideas for getting together or creating community please leave comments below.
Dr. John Dennehy is a deaf virologist professor at Queens College, City University of New York. You can learn more about John and his fascinating career trajectory in this The Mind Hears profile published in July of 2021.The article below was written by John for the Sparks of Change column in the journal eLife. In it, John reflects how the pandemic changed his access to academic spaces. You can read the original article in eLife here, or scroll below for the full version.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: When communication all changed
-John Dennehy
On Wednesday March 11, 2020, the governor of New York announced that all in-person classes were to be suspended at my university until the end of the semester. As the news spread, my colleagues speculated that the shutdown might last a few weeks or months. To me it felt more significant, not unlike the aftermath of 9/11 when we realized that the world had irrevocably changed. As a virologist, I had some idea about what was to come; as a deaf individual, I did not fully comprehend what this would entail for me.
Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak had reached New York City in late February, I had been checking the newspapers every morning to get the latest number of cases and plot them. With the case rate doubling every 2.5 days, and vaccine production 12–18 months away at best, I knew that it was impossibly optimistic to expect normality to return within a few months. The world was going to be sheltering in place for the foreseeable future, masking, meeting remotely and social distancing. My ability to communicate with others was already tenuous. I felt as if it was about to be severed.
Born profoundly hearing impaired, I was fitted with hearing aids as a child and raised in the ‘oral world’. For many like me, hearing isn’t the problem; the problem is to make sense of the sounds. Picture yourself in a foreign country where you have only a rudimentary understanding of the language. Conversations, television programmes, what a service employee is trying to tell you… everything is incomprehensible except for a few words. If it’s quiet and you concentrate, you can partially piece things together. That’s my baseline; in hearing tests, my word recognition score is around 60%. In ideal situations, I can usually puzzle out what someone is saying by relying heavily on lipreading, context and non-verbal cues. If it’s noisy or these cues are not available, I understand nothing.
Barely a few days after the governor’s announcement, all my teaching and work meetings were taking place online. This quickly represented a challenge, as electronic or amplified speech sounds heavily distorted when re-amplified by my cochlear implant and hearing aid. Even when speakers had their webcam turned on and I could lipread, it was nearly impossible for me to understand what they were saying.
Real-time captioning, which would help solve my problems, was rarely supported by communications platforms at the time. To my dismay, I discovered that it was missing from the learning management system that my college used for teaching. Thankfully, I found an adequate substitute in Google Meet and I was able to continue communicating with my students. I had less success with some colleagues, who insisted on using their preferred platforms even though they lacked live captioning.
Online conferences and symposia were another challenge. When I alerted organizers that their software was not providing captions, most gamely tried to accommodate my needs but struggled to navigate technology issues. We once sat in an awkward, embarrassed silence for 20 minutes as the host of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee meeting attempted to find how to turn on captioning. I had been invited to talk about the challenges faced by deaf individuals; I think this real-time demonstration was possibly more effective than anything I could have planned to say. Not everybody was so cooperative, however. Some organizers did not respond to my requests or claimed that accommodations weren’t possible. One asked me to not “make life more complicated” for them — ironically, they were putting together a series of seminars about improving access to research for underrepresented minorities.
After a few of these incidents, I reached out to human resources for assistance. It took four months of persistent emailing before I was presented with a solution: I could schedule a live transcriptionist for meetings, as long as I provided notice 24 hours in advance. As it turned out, this ‘solution’ had several problems. Transcriptionists were slower and less accurate than automatic captioning, and only available during business hours. It was also a logistical challenge to get them into conferences, especially those with registration fees.
Fortunately, after a few months, most platforms started to incorporate live transcription into their software. With this, my whole world changed again. Meetings and conferences had always been difficult for me as I would struggle to locate the speaker, focus on their face, and figure out what they were saying before someone else chimed in. Online, it was easy to see everyone clearly and to follow the conversation with lipreading and captioning. With remote communication becoming mainstream, I can now participate in meetings and conferences to a greater extent than in the past.
These technological improvements don’t mean that I no longer rely on the kindness and cooperation of others. For example, I still reach out to conference organizers in advance to ensure that captioning will be provided, because it’s usually not turned on by default. Hearing loss is often an invisible disability, and hosts may not realise that attendees – including their colleagues – could have hearing difficulties. They may assume that people will request the accommodations they need, but many are embarrassed to ask or don’t want to ‘be a bother’. It’s better to provide these adjustments proactively and mindfully.
The pace of change can sometimes feel frustratingly slow, yet I often say that there has never been a better time to be deaf. The hearing aids I had as a child were primitive compared to the engineering marvels that carefully curate sounds for my ears today. When captioned media began its long, slow rollout in the 1990s, a new world opened for me, one where I could finally share my friends’ enthusiasm for the latest movies and dramas. Now the era of mainstreaming remote meetings has ushered in another sea change for me.
One of our goals with The Mind Hears blog is to build a community and reduce isolation for deaf and hard of hearing academics. To provide an opportunity for our community to meet and interact, we are hosting a series of “open house” drop in sessions on Zoom, where people can come along to network, chat, and share experiences. You can meet other deaf and hard of hearing academics including folks who have contributed to and been profiled by the Mind Hears. Students are welcome!
Our first session on the 7th October 2022 was a great success with ~15 participants sharing ideas and concerns. Our next open house is Friday 28th April and will run for 1.5 hours (see a list of times in different time zones below). Pour yourself a cup of tea or coffee, and stay for as little or long as you would like. Unfortunately, we can’t provide cake as this is a global event.
18:00-19:30 CEST
17:00-18:30 BST
12:00-13:30 EDT
09:00-10:30 PDT
To provide a safe space for the event, we are asking people to register in advance. Registration is free, and you will receive a link to access the event upon registration. Please follow this link to register.
The session will have both CART transcription and two American Sign Language interpreters. Auto-captions will be embedded within zoom and we will provide URL to the CART transcription.
Looking forwards to seeing you, -Michele, Ana and Steph (the Mind Hears team)
This event is supported with funding from Access Advance, the National Science Foundation and The University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Thibault Duchemin (left) and Skinner Cheng (right) are the co-founders of Ava, a live automated captioning app.
Live automated captioning has become a growing presence in the lives of many of us who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. From captioning live presentations, to providing transcripts of online meetings, to on-the-go captioning with mobile devices, these AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools continue to improve in accuracy and speed. In the past few years, they have rapidly become a versatile addition to our toolkit of strategies for improved accessibility in academic and other settings.
Thibault Duchemin and Skinner Cheng are the co-founders of Ava, a live automated captioning app with various transcription features, including translation and text-to-speech. The assistive technology is designed to enhance communication in different scenarios such as professional, academic and social situations. As a CODA (child of deaf adult) and a deaf individual, respectively, Thibault and Skinner have close ties to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. We caught up with both of them to learn more about the origins of Ava and their experiences in creating this professional captioning tool. Below, Thibault first shares how Ava got its start, and then Skinner answers our questions about his journey from Taiwan to working with Ava.
Thibault: Backstory & how Ava began…
I grew up the only hearing person in a Deaf family, i.e. a CODA (great movie). My sister wanted to be a lawyer, but with the cost of interpreters to help with closing statements, client meetings, etc. there would be financial issues and communication barriers. I understood the challenge, and wanted to help!
While I was at Berkeley, I started working on “smart gloves” to translate sign language, which stirred a lot of excitement and showed there was a clear need for a communication tool.
After creating a prototype, plus hundreds of hours and bike rides across the Bay Area to meet and talk/sign/write with our potential users, we got some hard-earned learnings during customer development. We kept the mission – to bridge communication gaps between hearing and Deaf worlds – but we pivoted the product.
The pivot was to move to a mobile application that transcribes group conversations using speech-recognition technologies. The goal was 24/7 autonomy that would allow Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing users to understand and participate in group situations, effortlessly. Together, we designed a product that was easy to access in social, academic and professional conversational situations.
In early days, Skinner would go to an isolated space to check his phone at events. Today, in small groups, he uses the app [Ava] to communicate with others, transcending the silence blockade. At lunch and during meetings, we all use Ava to connect with each other.
What was just my personal story now became a team story as we slowly dissolved the communication barriers between each other.
Every day, these simple moments justify the thousands of hours we work to develop and improve this tool. We have a 45-person team (and counting), currently located between San Francisco and Paris. Skinner is a brilliant developer, who is Deaf and an inspiration to us all.
Skinner interview:
1. Tell us about your background? For example, tell us about your hearing loss, your schooling, and/or your family/culture
I was born in Taiwan. I was not born Deaf, but lost my hearing when I was 2-3 years old. My mother told me it was caused by an injection of medicine that I received at a clinic, which contained material that harmed my hearing.
I never received a standard education for Deafness in Taiwan—it is more offered and accepted here in the USA. I was educated by my mother to read lips and also speak. I never learned Sign Language because my mother wanted me to learn how to communicate like hearing people. I attended Deaf school for half of 1st grade, but then my mother enrolled me in a hearing school, so there were no disability accommodations I could rely on.
During primary school, my mother taught me math and other subjects. I started working with tutors one-on-one in high school until I graduated. In college, there were no captions, so I taught myself for the most part.
I usually communicate with my family, friends and colleagues by speaking, but sometimes we communicate through writing, if it’s too complex or difficult to say something clearly. Writing on paper was later substituted with a smartphone, which we often use today.
2. What has been your professional trajectory?
In college and at the university in Taiwan, I studied Computer Science. After graduation, my work was all about coding. I never worked at a large corporate company. I spent several years with a startup, which was later acquired by a medium-sized company.
My job position was always Software Engineer. I took a Senior engineering position 2-3 years before I left Taiwan to move to San Francisco. I studied and received my second Computer Science degree at the University of San Francisco. After graduation, I began working with Ava as Co-Founder and CTO [chief technology officer], and currently spend most of the time working as an Engineer within the company.
3. How did you meet and how did you come together to create Ava?
Many people ask this question—and it’s a fun story, indeed. When I graduated from the University of San Francisco, I was looking for a job, which could sponsor me to stay in the US and in San Francisco, specifically. I saw a post on a bulletin board at the school, which was from Thibault Duchemin and Ava’s COO, Pieter Doevendans. I don’t remember the exact words, but it said they were offering some accommodations (with a machine, or an assistive tool), which would allow Deaf and hard-of-hearing people better means to communicate during job interviews. So, I contacted them. And that was the first time Thibault and I met—in some cafe in downtown San Francisco.
Thibault didn’t know at the time that I was TOTALLY DEAF and he probably overestimated my lip reading ability. So after Thibault spoke for almost 30 minutes, I had to interrupt, and tell him that method of communicating wasn’t working. Eventually, we used my laptop to type and communicate. At that point, I understood they didn’t have the tool built, but wanted to do some user testing.
The second time we met, I met with Thibault and Pieter in another cafe in Millbrae, where we still used the laptop to communicate. I remember onlookers in the cafe were curious and inquired what we were doing. Afterwards, Thibault asked me to come to the University of California, Berkeley, where he described what they wanted to do. He asked me if I could help develop the MVP (minimum viable product) for the Android smartphone—and I did. We moved to San Mateo, launched the startup named Transcense in Boost, which is a startup incubator. After we raised adequate funding, we moved to Oakland. We got an established designer to help us design the company icon, and there you go… Ava was born!
4. Tell us what Ava is; how does it work?
Ava is an assistive tool and technical solution that Deaf and hard-of-hearing people can use—on their smartphones and personal computers—which transcribes what hearing people speak, in one-on-one or group situations. In brief, it’s a communication bridge between Deaf and hard-of-hearing people and hearing people.
5. Does Ava work with multiple spoken languages? How did you choose what languages to invest in?
Yes, Ava does work with multiple spoken languages. However, Ava cannot automatically detect the exact spoken language and switch between the languages just yet. The user has to choose the spoken language, then Ava will accurately transcribe.
We also provide translation, so if people in a conversation speak different languages, they can choose the language they speak, and Ava can translate different spoken languages into the language they can read.
Since our teams are located in the US and France, we focused our primary support on the English and French languages. However, it transcribes many languages and we continue adding more based on user request, the market, or direction from our Sales team.
6. Who is using Ava? What situations are they using it in? The Mind Hears readers are primarily working in academic settings; in what manner is Ava being used in academia?
Deaf and hard-of-hearing people are Ava’s primary users. The DHH community uses Ava when they need to communicate easily with hearing people—when they want to know what someone is saying, and speak if they are unable to voice as clearly as they would like.
In academia, Ava can be used to transcribe speech from instructors or students for anyone who is Deaf or hard-of-hearing, and also for hearing students to have transcriptions of lectures. From personal experience, having captions to understand what a professor or teacher is saying makes the lesson a lot more interesting. Accessible accommodations make a huge difference with understanding and learning.
Ava also provides Scribe service, which merges AI with a human scribe to catch nuances and improve the accuracy of real-time transcription. We also offer CART services—a service I benefited from a lot when I studied at the University of San Francisco. Our mission is to make Deaf and hard-of-hearing peoples’ lives easier and happier in any situation, including academia—that’s why Ava was created.
7. Has knowledge exchange between academia and industry played a role in the development of Ava? Are there any intersections between industry and academia that have been important in your entrepreneurial journey?
Yes, absolutely. A concrete example is that we have a team in France, and they focus on AI and speech, and most of them are researchers in academia. Most of us in the US are engineers and part of industry, and we help convert the team’s ideas into real tools, which help people. The perfect intersection between academia and industry is to make the dream come true.
8. What limitations do you see for Ava? What are the greatest challenges in getting it to work as the tool you envision it being? Where do you see technology like Ava going in the future?
I feel most comfortable using an assistive tool, whether it’s an app or device that I can use autonomously—rather than asking other people in a conversation to set up the application with a smartphone, tablet or laptop. Also, accuracy of speech is always the challenge and something we are constantly improving. Everyone within Ava is aware that the limitations lie in certain situations where there may be background noise or other reasons why accuracy is not 100%. Other companies that offer captions experience the same issues. These are the challenges we want to solve, which will be the greatest of achievements, if we can succeed.
In the future, I envision more of a Utopia, where I can wear glasses, and the caption will show up like a bubble caption attached to the speaker in the screen of my glasses. With such a device, I won’t need to ask another person to set up the device and application. And I’ll know who is speaking, no matter how many speakers there are, so the conversation is clear for me and I can keep pace with a discussion.
Also, I haven’t figured out a way for others to better understand my speaking—I can speak, but it’s unclear. I know a little sign language, but I’m used to speaking, so it would be great if there was a way to make unclear speech more clear.
9. Have you faced any challenges related to hearing-loss on your entrepreneurial journey?
Yes, there have been a lot of challenges. Communication is the pain and hardship. And the side effect of not being able to communicate as one would like is isolation, which makes me feel alone and excluded. I think that’s also why I don’t prefer to work in large companies, because I am sure the situation would be worse. On the other hand, I have been lucky as colleagues I had when I lived and worked in Taiwan accommodated my situation. And here, since I am working with Ava, which aims to help Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, the challenges due to my situation are turning less and less.
10. Do you have any advice for people with hearing loss who might be starting out on their own entrepreneurial journeys?
I was lucky, and my journey is a bit different. However, I think, regardless of any special circumstance or situation, in any stage of the entrepreneurial journey, you should not be alone. It is great if you have people who can empathize, accommodate and understand you. Surrounding yourself with people who are also passionate about the mission and understand why you want to start your entrepreneurial journey will be beneficial.
11. You are both from different countries, and through your work on Ava have likely interacted with deaf/hard of hearing people from many parts of the world. Do you have any insight to share on perceptions of deafness in different parts of the world?
I know disability accommodations are very different in different countries. Luckily, it’s the trend that technologies, including AI, are growing everywhere and have been applied in some modern countries. But for countries that don’t have advanced technology such as the Internet, I think we should try our best to support them by providing more resources.
I moved to the US because accessibility accommodations for Deaf people were better here than in Taiwan. It’s gotten better over the past four decades, but there is still a long way to go.
**In case you are wondering, TMH received no financial compensation from Ava for publishing this interview. We were just really interested to hear their story!
As I have not yet advanced in my career despite completing my Ph.D., I continue to seek opportunities for career development. For most people, including deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, a college degree increases their employment opportunities, economic benefits, and success in the workplace. However, disabled folks are persistently underemployed, meaning that their skills are not being used in the workplace. I have worked for the same academic institution for 32 years with most of my work in secretarial support, even though I have applied for administrative positions that would better match my education credentials. My lack of advancement in the workplace can be attributed to several factors, including a lack of disability awareness, inadequate accommodations, and non-inclusive behavior. COVID-19 provided administrators with a better understanding of the types of accommodations that can improve work performance and enable professional growth for employees with hearing loss.
Let’s begin at the beginning. In 1986, after graduating from high school, I moved from Hamilton, Ohio, to live with my sister in New Jersey. However, my life experienced a turning point. Although, I was not diagnosed with hearing loss as a newborn, only a few days after living with my big sister, she noticed something was wrong with my hearing. The big sister did what any big sister would and had my hearing checked. I learned that my entire life, I have been reading lips to understand conversations due to sensorineural hearing loss.
How was my life before the hearing loss diagnosis?
Attending college has always been my dream to enable me to climb the corporate ladder to the boardroom. I struggled academically from the 4th grade until high school, so I hesitated to take college preparatory courses. I needed help to excel despite studying and completing my homework. When I took English tests, I misspelled words and needed support. During the lecture, I needed help understanding math concepts. Hence, instead of prepping for college, I pursued vocational education to acquire office skills, such as typing and stenography, which were in demand at the time. Shorthand could have been more efficient, while typing and stenography were fast. My stenography assignments and tests were always incomplete, and I earned low grades, negatively affecting my attitude toward my teacher. I understand now that the teacher was not at fault. Because I was unaware of my hearing loss, I didn’t know I needed accommodations. Despite facing academic challenges, I remained persistent, kept believing in my dream, and received my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 2008.
Was 1990 the right time for accommodations?
The 20th century saw some laws aimed at improving accessibility to employment for Americans with disabilities. On July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law. As a civil rights law, the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in all areas of public life, such as jobs, schools, transportation, etc. (Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990). What does this mean for me? In the workplace, employers must provide reasonable accommodations for an employee with hearing loss to perform well on the job. But access also requires administrators to understand disability awareness. Raising awareness fosters an open communication environment and enhances the interpersonal support required to succeed in the workplace with hearing loss. Employers with solid disability awareness recognize that the first attempt at accommodation might not be the best and that you must refine and adjust to various situations. An employer can demonstrate hearing loss awareness by creating a welcoming environment, knowing an employee’s specific hearing limitations, fostering an open communication environment, and having some understanding about the situational nature of accommodations.
Several months later, I applied for a position as a law school secretary. The opportunity to enter higher education was exciting. While I was proud of my 85-wpm typing speed, I knew shorthand would be challenging. When the academic Dean interviewed me, her communication skills were excellent, and she displayed courtesy, competence, and engagement. While I didn’t know this at the time, I needed these attributes in a supervisor who could create an accessible work environment. I disclosed my hearing loss to the Dean, who assured me that it would not be an issue and that the administration would provide the necessary accommodations for me to succeed at work. It sounded great, as I believed it would work. According to the Dean, employers must provide reasonable accommodations under the ADA. What are accommodations? I assumed that if the sound were loud, I would hear it, but that’s not the case – it’s more complex than that. Although I can listen to speech sounds, I can only sometimes understand some words. (See previous TMH post by Sarah Sparks about hearing versus understanding).
I accepted the job offer. My responsibilities included working with eight faculty members, answering calls, taking messages, and handling correspondence. I sat in a noisy area, and my employer, and I, in our limited knowledge of options at the time, believed that an amplified phone was the ideal accommodation. Although the telephone amplifier made louder sounds, the speech was unclear, and the voices sounded muffled. I advocated to my supervisor about my difficulty understanding speech over the telephone, yet I continued answering the phone for fifteen years. Unfortunately, I received negative performance reviews every year. I realize now that it was not appropriate for me to answer the phone during that time. It is beneficial to have a knowledgeable accommodations office on campus to provide disability support to law school students, faculty, administrators, and staff. That office might have told my supervisor and I about alternative strategies for my work accommodation.
Latisha looks at signage bay her desk that guide folks how to effectively communicate with her. The signs explain that she uses assistive listening devices to transcribe conversations.
Knowing Your Needs
Although the employee must be able to request appropriate accommodations needed to perform well on the job, the success of disabled employees also requires administrators to understand disability awareness and to establish an open communication environment. These conditions enhance the interpersonal support required to succeed in the workplace with hearing loss. Employers with solid disability awareness recognize that the first attempt at accommodation might not be the best and that you must refine and adjust to various situations. An employer can demonstrate hearing loss awareness by 1) creating a welcoming and inclusive environment with open communication, 2) knowing the communication styles and models that work best for specific employees, and 3) having some understanding about accommodations. There are soft and hard accommodations.
Soft accommodations are:
Face the person when speaking.
Talk in a normal tone.
Ample-lit room.
Talk in quiet spaces.
Send the person an email of the time you’ll stop by their desk so they will be aware.
Share an agenda before the meeting, so the employee knows what will be discussed.
Understand that the employee may experience listening fatigue and need to take breaks during the meeting.
Know that the employee can only follow one conversation at a time.
Hard Accommodations include.
Closed captioning.
CART or live captioning.
I refused to give up on my career and persisted through driven strategies of self-accommodation, self-management, and self-advocacy.
Latisha Porter-Vaughn is a doctoral graduate from The University of Arizona. Her Ph.D. published research is “Perceptions of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing College Students’ Work Readiness and Preparation.” She is a research associate with the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes to continue contributing to literature that will help improve education and employment outcomes for students who are deaf or have hearing loss. And a paralegal at Seton Hall University Center for Social Justice. She is a Gallaudet University Peer Mentor for people who have hearing loss. She is also the president of the HLAA New Jersey State Association and chair of its Scholarship Committee. She is the co-founder of the HLAA Essex Chapter and a Deaf Snapshop Mentor of SPAN New Jersey. She has self-published her book “Sounds of the Heart: The Story of a HearStrong Champion Persisting Against All Odds” and is soon to self-publish her second book “How We Hear: A Useful Guide for the Hearing to Understand Hearing Loss—Answers to 10 Questions for the Workplace & Social Situations.”
Location: Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
Field of expertise: Linguistics
Twitter: @nkduggan
Tell us about your background
I grew up with deaf parents and a deaf sister so I was very fortunate to be able to use Irish Sign Language (ISL) at home. One of my favourite memories is my father telling his versions of classic stories such as Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood through ISL, which was WAY more fun than reading from the books.
I attended an all-girls deaf school in Dublin. My generation saw the shift from oralism and all hearing teachers on our first day of school, to a growing number of deaf teachers and an acceptance of using ISL in the classrooms. During my school years, most of my teachers did not teach using ISL; but toward my final year I could feel the attitude shift among the teachers from not caring about whether we could understand them if they spoke, to feeling guilty that they had not learned ISL earlier. This was major, considering that my mother, who attended the same school, was punished severely whenever she signed.
The two deaf schools in Dublin were an all-boys school and an all-girls school. My mother, my sister and I attended the girls’ school and my father attended the boys’ school. An interesting history about Irish Sign Language is the use of gendered signs. Because the schools were separate based on gender and there was very little interaction between their pupils, these schools had numerous different signs, sometimes even to a point where it impaired the ability for deaf people of different genders to understand each other (see Le Master, 1997 for more on this). This meant that my mother and my father had different versions of some ISL signs in our household based on their gender, although it must be said that my father used more of the women’s version of ISL signs as there are three women in our family. Truth be told, I had not really appreciated the uniqueness of the language situation in my family until I started my PhD in Linguistics.
How did you get to where you are?
I have a BA degree in Geography, with a focus on Human Geography. My interests during my undergraduate years were the influences of the outside environments on deaf communities and how the communities embraced and/or resisted changes from external influences. I used to want to be a teacher, but during my undergraduate years, I realised that I loved research and wanted to continue doing research, so I decided to apply for a postgraduate course. Because of my interests in the dynamics of deaf communities, I took a MA degree in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism. My research focused on the relation between the Irish deaf community and the ISL recognition campaign; e.g. the deaf community’s access to information provided by the campaigners and whether they understand what the consequences may potentially be once ISL was recognised by the state (which it is now).
I was very fortunate to have a deaf friend who was a PhD student herself. We met up for coffee and I told her I was thinking of pursuing a PhD. She told me to take a break in between my MA studies and my PhD studies to explore what was out there. Looking back on this, I appreciate this advice so much. In the five years gap, I’ve worked in different governmental agencies, advocated for deaf rights and even moved to a different country and learnt two new languages. Because of my experiences, I have a new appreciation for language studies which got me to where I am today, researching multilingualism in deaf migrants in Sweden!
What is a professional challenge you have faced related to your deafness? How have you mitigated this challenge?
During my BA and MA, I tended to work alone the majority of my time and did not really seek the advices of my supervisors. This was for several reasons. The main reason was that it was difficult to get interpreters for either short or spontaneous meetings so I either had to speak with my supervisors or write to them. The second reason, particularly during my Masters, was that I found that I was constantly explaining how the deaf community works, how sign languages work, why certain terms were either appropriate or not appropriate and why I did not choose a particular theory that my supervisor thought would suit the topic best. I felt that the constant explanations ate up supervision time, and left no time to be mentored, so I avoided meeting my supervisor the rest of my Masters. Looking back on my thesis, even though the topic was really interesting, I felt that the lack of mentorship showed in my writing. I also had severe imposter syndrome, which meant that I was afraid to ask her simple questions in case I was seen as that deaf student that did not know anything.
My principal supervisor for my PhD is a deaf signer herself and this helps me immensely not only in dealing with imposter syndrome (I can ask her simple questions without feeling ashamed), but I’ve also learnt that a supervisor is meant to act as a mentor that guides me in my writing and advises me on a wide array of areas. My PhD has been an incredibly emotional journey of reflecting on my past, especially on my school years. For this, I am forever grateful to my current supervisor!
What advice would you give your former self?
Build up a network of deaf students where you can share tips, or even just rant about barriers you’re facing.
Working in Stockholm University where there is a great number of deaf colleagues, I am grateful that I have the opportunity to just rant to others about silly things that we as deaf people often have to face in the university world and I can get advice in how to navigate certain obstacles.
Any funny stories you want to share?
Learning new languages is exciting, especially when you have opportunities to use these new languages. This was the case for me when I moved to Sweden. I have not had the opportunity to use French outside of French classes at school so it was incredibly exciting for me to be able to use Swedish outside of the classroom. However, in order to improve my Swedish, I must use it every day even when I felt that I was not “good enough” in the language. The ä, å and ö letters were difficult for me to differentiate and unfortunately for me, some words can have an entirely different meaning with an ‘ä’ in it than an ‘a’. I’ll give you a real-life example! A common way to sign off an email is “med vänlig hälsning” (“with friendly greeting” would be a direct translation). When I started my job as a civil servant at the local council, there were numerous times I wrote “med vanlig halsning” (“with normal greeting”) … I can just imagine the faces of the politicians reading my emails that signed off with a ‘normal’ greeting!
Reference:
Le Master, B. (1997) Sex differences in Irish Sign Language. In J.H. Hills, P.J. Mistry & L. Campbell (Eds.) Trends in Linguistics. Mouton De Gruyter. Available at this link.
The Mind Hears 