1 out of 4 people on a hiring committee think I can’t do my job

— Michele

“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

Art of Accommodations in the Workplace for Hard-of-Hearing Employees

— Dr. Latisha Porter-Vaughn

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.”

Writing reference letters for disabled mentees

This post was originally published as an opinion piece within Inside Higher Education in February 2022. Since then, I’ve learned that some graduate schools in the US ask that letter writers not mention disability, citing section 5.04 of the US Education Reform Act. In my opinion, keeping disability or deafness out of reference letters misses critical opportunities both for conversations with mentees about disclosure and for demonstrating how disabled experiences enhance traits needed for success, thereby rejecting the deficit model. If done thoughtfully, such efforts can empower disabled or deaf mentees, de-stigmatize disability and erode academic ableism.

Maybe the best approach depends on the situation. What do you think?

— Michele

---

Reference letter–writing season is upon us, and you may be wondering how to approach writing about the disabilities of students and colleagues you are recommending. Letters of reference are critical components of admissions, hiring and promotion. But because letter readers tend to read between the lines, even just mentioning a disability can be a red flag, as Amy Vidali, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, has noted. For example, the decision of when/how to disclose deafness in the job search came up often when The Mind Hears surveyed deaf and hard of hearing academics about their job search experiences.

As a part-deaf full professor who has navigated her entire career with a disability, I’ve been on all sides of the desk. I’ve been the mentee cringing at the misrepresentation of my disability, I’ve been the mentor wondering how to frame my mentee’s skills in the best light and I’ve been the letter reader assessing strengths and weaknesses of candidates. Here, I offer some specific suggestions.

You should never disclose someone’s disability without their approval. Even if someone has a visible disability, the letter readers may not yet have met your mentee. Please don’t presume that disclosing disability benefits candidates because “the committee likes to see disability for diversity.” Committees committed to equity are still vulnerable to the pervasive ableism that drives discrimination and harassment of people with disabilities within academe and our society. Admissions and hiring committees are much more likely to admit/hire an abled person.

For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reports that, in 2020, only 26 percent of disabled people with bachelor’s degrees were employed, compared to 72 percent of able-bodied people with bachelor’s degrees. Asking your mentee for approval to mention their disability need not be awkward if you are prepared to explain why you think that mentioning their disability in your letter would be beneficial.

Guidelines for Having the Conversation

If you haven’t already, ask how the person requesting the reference letter describes their disability. Do they use person-first or disability-first language? Some folks prefer medical based terms like “hearing impaired,” while others prefer culture-based terms like “Deaf” (with a capital “D”). In my case, I prefer “part-deaf” or “part-Deaf” to either “hard of hearing” or “deaf,” because it expresses that while I have residual hearing, my hearing loss is significant enough that just speaking a little louder is not going to accommodate my disability. The descriptor “part-deaf” is not yet standard, so I greatly appreciate it when folks check in with me about how I describe my disability.

Please don’t guess the preferences of your mentee. Also, consider that some people may not want you to describe them as disabled and would prefer other labels such as “neurodiverse,” “having chronic illness,” “Deaf” and so on.

When explaining why you want to mention their disability in your letter, share with your mentee specific character traits that you notice them employing as they navigate challenges associated with their disability. Are they a problem solver? Do they show resilience? Are they a great self-advocate?

My advice is not to mention any accommodations that your disabled mentee uses. While you might be tempted to show that accommodations “fix the disability,” the deficit framing doesn’t center your mentee’s skills and provides the letter reader with ableist reasons to rank your mentee lower than other abled applicants or nominees.

We don’t often get opportunities to tell people about the strengths that we see in them, and this conversation with your mentee is a great opportunity to do just that. Because of the widespread stigmatization of disability, we also rarely talk openly about it, so you might feel uncomfortable bringing up this topic.

My advice is to keep the conversation authentic and very specific. Drifting away from authenticity leaves you vulnerable to casting the disabled person as inspirational; such casting is othering and harmful. Stella Young called this phenomenon “inspiration porn,” because it serves to make the abled feel good while objectifying people with disabilities. Additionally, saying that a person inspires you centers your experience and not your mentee’s. Yes, this is tricky ground! You may, in fact, find someone inspiring. Yet keeping your characterizations authentic and specific helps avoid inspiration porn.

For example, instead of saying, “It is incredible how Michele managed to advance to full professor while disabled,” you could say, “Michele’s experiences as a disabled academic contribute to her success, as she has developed exceptional problem-solving skills, resilience when faced with inaccessible situations, self-advocacy to adjust to inaccessible situations and time/energy management to prioritize important tasks.” For your letter to be effective, you can also provide specific examples of those skills. You could follow up with, “For instance, in noisy settings that present a challenge for part-deaf folks, Michele either extracts critical information using visual cues or, if the conversation is lengthy or particularly important, she effectively self-advocates by adjusting the conversation toward a quieter setting and/or harnessing technologic solutions.”

Last, ask your mentee what they would like you to emphasize in your letter. This is a good practice for any letter of recommendation, and Julie Posselt of the Inclusive Graduate Education Network offers other helpful equitable best practice for reference letters.

Guidelines for Writing Your Letter

Unless we use template letters of references with standard language, our letters will be subjective and vulnerable to either our own biases or the biases of the letter readers. But template letters don’t provide the rich information that guides hiring, admission and promotion decisions. What we can do instead is take a thoughtful and critical look at how we frame difference and disability in our letters of reference, as Vidali and Posselt have recommended. Here are some first steps.

Please don’t say that the person has “overcome their disability.” We live with our disabilities; we can’t erase them. We don’t say that first-generation college students overcome their families. Why say this about disability? In addition, the framing of the disabled person as an overcomer steers you well into the inspiration-porn minefield.

Instead, you can acknowledge that the disabled person faces disadvantages (describe specifics) with (insert adjective) skill and self-advocacy (followed by specific examples). This framing acknowledges that navigating life with a disability requires constant effort and draws attention to valuable skills.

Unless they say so, avoid writing, “Despite her disability …” or “You would never know that he has a disability.” Such phrases have strong ableist undertones. While your intention in writing those phrases is to ease concerns of the letter reader, this deficit framing does not center the skills of your mentee, which is the goal of your letter of reference.

I will add that mentioning the quality of speech of deaf and hard of hearing mentees in your letter focuses on the deficit of deafness and assimilation into predominantly hearing environments (see The Mind Hear’s post entitled Eloquence is overrated). Check with you mentee if they want their speech mentioned in the letter.

Finally, in your mentee’s conversation with you, they may say that they don’t want you mentioning their disability because either they don’t want to disclose or they plan to disclose in some other way. They know best how to present themselves.

Presentando The Mind Hears [La Mente Oye] a académicos de habla hispana

-translated by Ana

Our goal for The Mind Hears is to have it serve as a global resource for deaf and HoH (hard of hearing) academics. Though countries differ markedly in the degree of resources provided to deaf/HoH individuals, our hope is that this blog can be a refuge and forum for all, regardless of where you are. To date, however, most of our blog contributors and followers have been in the US and Europe. Taking advantage of the fact that Ana is Colombian, we have reproduced our Mission Statement here in Spanish in the hopes of reaching our Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues worldwide. We welcome help with translating our mission statement to other languages.

En el año 2018, Michele Cooke y yo, ambas profesoras en la Universidad de Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, decidimos empezar un blog que reflejara nuestras experiencias como personas con sordera en un ambiente académico. Así nació “The Mind Hears [La Mente Oye]”. Dada nuestra localización geográfica, las entradas del blog han sido – hasta ahora – publicadas en inglés. Con la esperanza de que este blog llegue a ser un recurso global para personas sordas trabajando en universidades, traducimos aquí la misión del blog al español. Esperamos que esto lleve a nuestros colegas de habla hispana a contribuir entradas al blog en el futuro.

Misión

Este blog está escrito por y para académicos en cualquier etapa de su carrera con algún grado de sordera. Aquí usamos el término “sordo” para representar a todas las personas con discapacidad auditiva, independientemente del grado de sordera y del modo de comunicación preferido (ya sea oral o por lengua de señas). Los objetivos de este blog son:

• Proporcionar un foro para la colaboración abierta entre académicos sordos  
• Compartir estrategias para prosperar con sordera en el mundo académico 
• Fomentar una red de académicos sordos que promuevan estrategias de comunicación inclusivas en las instituciones académicas.

¿Por qué un blog?

Como académicos sordos, continuamente hemos enfrentado obstáculos en el camino al éxito profesional en entornos diseñados para y por personas sin discapacidades auditivas. Nuestras experiencias no han sido todas iguales. Dependiendo de  nuestros antecedentes/proveniencia y de las instituciones en las que nos encontramos, es probable que tengamos diferencias en acceso a recursos y en la capacidad de abogar por si mismos. Debido a que la sordera puede ser una discapacidad invisible, hemos a menudo perdido oportunidades para reconocernos y aprender estrategias efectivas los unos de los otros. A través de este blog, esperamos alcanzar a académicos sordos y con problemas de audición en todo el mundo, tanto para reducir el aislamiento, como para armar una “caja de herramientas” comunitaria de recursos e ideas. La sordera es variable y puede afectarnos de muchas y diferentes maneras, pero a través de la experiencia compartida del blog, esperamos brindar algo de valor a todos aquellos que visitan y contribuyen a nuestras discusiones.

¿Por qué académicos?

Como académicos, estamos involucrados en muchas actividades que requieren comunicación continua, a menudo con colegas y estudiantes oyentes. Dictamos clases, presentamos seminarios, participamos en comités y páneles de asesoría, moderamos sesiones de discusión y dirigimos reuniones de grupo, participamos en actividades de divulgación pública y nos comunicamos con la prensa. Muchos de los impedimentos a la comunicación que se presentan en estas actividades son exclusivos al entorno académico — y el éxito de todos los académicos, oyentes o sordos, depende de la comunicación productiva en estas situaciones. Sin embargo, los académicos sordos a menudo no encontramos soluciones adecuadas para los obstáculos a la comunicación: nuestros audiólogos no tienen suficientes clientes académicos, y las oficinas de servicios para discapacitados en las universidades están diseñadas para servir principalmente a los estudiantes de pregrado (no profesores, estudiantes de posgrado u otros académicos). Al centrarnos en la comunidad académica sorda, particularmente a niveles después del pregrado, tenemos la intención de crear un recurso personalizado que ayude a todos los académicos que se identifican como sordos a alcanzar nuestro potencial profesional.

¿Por qué “The Mind Hears [La Mente Oye]”?

El título de nuestro blog proviene de una carta escrita por el autor Víctor Hugo al educador sordo, Ferdinand Berthier. Hugo escribió:

“¿Qué importa la sordera del oído, cuando la mente oye? La única sordera, la sordera verdadera, la sordera incurable, es la de la mente.”

Estas líneas encapsulan la poderosa idea que nuestro potencial para contribuir al ámbito académico, al conocimiento y a la sociedad no está limitado por nuestra capacidad o incapacidad de escuchar sonidos. Las dificultades que surgen al trabajar en entornos académicos dominados por la audición se pueden enfrentar con creatividad y resiliencia, las cuales son características de la mente. Las herramientas que las personas sordas usan para facilitar la comunicación, incluyendo la lengua de señas, la lectura labios, el uso de audífonos, los subtítulos y los implantes cocleares, por nombrar solo algunos, ilustran el potencial ilimitado del ingenio humano. La declaración de Hugo también refleja nuestra convicción de que la colaboración con la mente abierta a nuevas ideas, a la inclusión y a aquellos que abordan las cosas de manera diferente a la nuestra, puede beneficiarnos a todos. Ya sea que nos hayamos criado usando lengua de señas en la comunidad Sorda, o que recientemente hayamos perdido la audición, todos los que trabajamos en el mundo académico hemos desarrollado formas de ser exitosos. A veces podemos ver beneficios en nuestra sordera (por ejemplo, Deaf Gain), y otras veces nuestra sordera puede ser una carga no deseada (por ejemplo, Conquering faculty meetings (or not…)). Este blog es un hogar para todas estas perspectivas y experiencias. Esperamos que hallen en este blog un lugar de encuentro gratificante de mentes verdaderamente empoderadas, ingeniosas y abiertas.

New Year’s Resolution 2022: Making your in-person and remote workplaces accessible for your deaf/HoH colleagues

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 what is becoming a The Mind Hears New Year tradition (see posts from 2019, 2020, and 2021), we have updated our list of recommendations for making your workplace accessible. You can view and download the full list of recommendations for making your in-person and remote workplaces 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 colleagues, we create a better workplace for everyone (see post on the impact of the Mind Hears). 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 post on Where are the deaf/HoH 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 useful employment 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 and not expecting us to bear all of the burden of creating accessible workplaces. Speech reading conversations, planning accommodations and making sure that technology/accommodations function is never-ending and exhausting work that we do above and beyond our teaching, research, and service (see post on making an impact at high stakes conferences, post on conquering faculty meetings, and post on teaching very large classes). Your understanding and your help changing our workplaces can make a huge difference to us.  For example, if a speaker doesn’t repeat a question, 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 ensuring speakers repeat questions (see post on listening fatigue and post on the mental gymnastics of hearing device use)? 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 hereand here).

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 (see post on working with sign interpreters and post on networking with deaf colleagues who use interpreters), oral interpreters, CART (see post on Captions and Craptions), or FM systems (see post on Using FM systems at conferences). 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. What works for someone in one situation may not work at all for that same person in another situation, even if the situations 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.

Want to be a better ally and make your workplace accessible for your deaf and hard of hearing colleagues? Follow this link to read our list of recommendations. We welcome your comments and suggestions either to this post or directly within the document at this link.

Three reasons why I chose industry research over academia

-Alex Lu

After a long five years, my stint as a PhD student was finally reaching its end – and that meant I needed to hit the job market. As someone who was graduating from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto with a specialization in computational biology, I had some uncertainty about what kinds of positions I should be applying for. I was at the intersection of two fields with drastically different career trajectories. In the life sciences you are typically expected to spend a few years as a postdoc, but in computer science it’s not uncommon to apply for faculty positions right out of the PhD. I did know that I wanted to stay in academia, so I decided to apply to assistant professor postings first to see if I could successfully convince search committees that I was really more of a computer scientist, and then I’d fall back on postdocs if my search was unsuccessful. What I didn’t know was how much my preferences would evolve through the job search: despite being offered a Canada Research Chair position that would have come with up to a million dollars in federal funding, I ended up choosing an industry research position at Microsoft Research (MSR). What influenced my decision to choose industry over academia?

When I first entered the job market, I had three main ideas about academia that made me believe it was the only option for me. First, I thought it was more accessible. Universities are usually progressive, and each has their own accessibility or disability services department. Even though accessibility legislation exists, I always thought that the expense of hiring interpreters would clash against corporate goals of profit, so I assumed that companies would try to scrape by with the bare minimum of accommodations. Second, I thought it was the only place where I could pursue an independent research agenda. I do a lot of basic research, and I strongly believe that scientific research should be used to enrich everyone’s lives and be accessible to everyone, not held as secrets in a private company. Third, I thought it was the best opportunity for mentorship. In academia, you are required to mentor students. As someone from an underrepresented background on multiple axes, I wanted to make sure that other underrepresented people had the same opportunity to benefit from the academic system as I did. 

So naturally, the majority of my applications went out to universities. I sent out a total of 32 applications to research-intensive institutions globally. I made one exception — I sent out an application to MSR as the sole industry position I applied for. The only reason I sent out the MSR application was because a colleague had transitioned to a position there, and he sent me a Twitter DM inviting me to apply. I was initially resistant, but he reassured me that the application would be no additional work; to apply I just needed to submit the same research statement and CV that I was sending off to academia. I figured I had nothing to lose by applying, and sending off my application took less than thirty minutes on their online portal. 

A few months after I sent out my applications, I starting hearing back from departments. Being a fresh PhD graduate with no postdoctoral training, and with the pandemic causing hiring freezes, I was pessimistic about my prospects — so I was surprised to learn that I had scored several interviews at institutions in the United States, Canada, and Europe. What surprised me was that at the majority of institutions I was interviewed by life sciences departments, while the computer science departments mostly turned me down. I was expecting the opposite given the standards for postdocs in both fields, but it turned out that many life sciences departments were excited about interdisciplinary research and aware of field-specific nuances in training. The majority of institutions where I interviewed were incredibly warm and inclusive, and excellent on access: one consulted with their access department ahead of time and offered me 1.5x the time on the screening interview to account for interpretation delays; another institution’s search committee greeted me in sign language. I think my positive experience may have been influenced by me explicitly identifying as Deaf and queer in my research statements; some institutions may have self-selected out at that point, leaving me with only the progressive departments. 

My interview at MSR came later than most of my interviews in academia, so they had to beat a pretty strong impression as well as my natural resistance to the idea of industry research. So how did they do it? What I found is that MSR systematically challenged each of the misconceptions that I had about academic versus industry research. In doing so, they exposed faults in the academic system. While I was aware of these faults, I always considered them nuisances that I had to accept to join an otherwise principled system. MSR offered some better alternatives, and made me realize that these were things I did not actually have to put up with.

First, on the accessibility front, I was taken back to learn that Microsoft had their own in-house ASL coordination team. During my academic job interviews, I was mostly interviewing at departments that while open-minded, had never employed a Deaf faculty member previously. I expected this would be the case; Deaf STEM PhDs are still rare due to the sheer amount of systematic barriers, so I naturally accepted that I would need to do a lot of explaining and legwork on my needs. I had already devised a strategy to minimize the impact of this inexperience on me: I told each of the departments that they should enlist my current academic interpreters at my PhD institution, so I would not be penalized as departments scrambled to find potentially less-experienced interpreters without being aware of the pitfalls. In contrast, the ASL coordination team at MSR directly reached out directly to me. They were totally on board with my plan, but they also made me aware of their own services. They told me that they provided ASL interpretation for about 40 Deaf employees globally, so they already had a system in place for coordinating interpreters. In fact, their in-house ASL coordinator was actually Deaf herself, and was a certified DI — I had an opportunity to chat with her, and we discussed her plans for building a community for Deaf and hard of hearing people at the company. 

This was the first thing I realized MSR could do better than most academic departments: they were able to bring institutional knowledge on accessibility. I’ve always considered myself fortunate, because as a Deaf person, I’ve rarely had to “fight” for my needs — I’ve mostly worked with accessibility departments and academics who were open-minded and interested in accommodating me. But even when working with institutions that are willing, I still have to allocate a proportion of my energy to explaining who I am and what I need to those who have never worked with Deaf people before. I had always considered that energy tax to be inevitable. Microsoft challenged that belief. While I still have to do some explaining — for example, I’m the first Deaf person they’ve hired in a research role (as opposed to sales or engineering etc.), so there are still specific nuances that come with that — for the first time, I could consider what else I could do with the energy that I would normally expend on defending my existence. 

Second, on the research front, I learned that MSR gave full research autonomy to their researchers. Prior to interviewing at MSR, I mostly knew about industry through informational interviews with start-ups and smaller biotech companies. I was not impressed; in addition to keeping my research scope constrained on what would be immediately beneficial to the company, I would not have the opportunity to publish and disseminate my research to the public. What my interview at MSR taught me was that industry research actually occupies a wider spectrum than that. The researchers there explained to me the structure of the company: while Microsoft itself has its own research team that does work on more product-orientated research, MSR is considered an independent entity. While it receives funding from the parent company, the researchers pursue their own research agenda, publish almost all of their research publicly, and maintain active ties with academic institutions. Finally, I was also very excited about how the research group was set up: unlike a traditional academic department, which is stratified by discipline, MSR is highly interdisciplinary, and you see social scientists, mathematicians, biologists, etc. on the same floor every day, instead of being hosted in a different buildings across campus. As a highly interdisciplinary researcher, I was excited about just how much my research would branch out in an environment where I was in constant contact with people of different research backgrounds than me.

Essentially, my new position looks similar to an assistant professor position, with some key differences: the biggest is that there is no grant-writing or mandated teaching involved. There is also no tenure involved. For me, all of these things were appealing. I had always viewed the grant-writing side of academia as a necessary evil to keep the research churning, and the prospect of just not having to write grants was mind-bogglingly exciting. While I enjoy teaching, I enjoy it with highly-motivated students who are there to learn, and I don’t like the administration aspects of more routine courses where many students are just there to check off a requirement on a degree. As for tenure — while the end-prospect was exciting, I was concerned about how the demands of the tenure track might change my values and research philosophy. One of the things I expressed while interviewing with academic departments was that I didn’t want to sign up for a school where publication requirements for tenure were too demanding. I felt that stress of churning out papers might trickle down to my students, and I wanted to be someone who would hold space for my students to learn and explore their own interests instead of expecting them to be productive to bolster my own portfolio. 

Third, I realized that there is still so much mentoring that can be done outside of formal academic structures. One of the disadvantages of the MSR position for me was that I would not be able to build a lab and mentor students through a graduate degree. I initially considered this a serious demerit that would clash with my goals of fostering underrepresented students through the academic system. However, the other benefits of the MSR job made me think about alternative ways I could achieve this goal. I realized that the autonomy baked into the job would still give me a lot of opportunity to do good. For example, each researcher at MSR has the opportunity to hire an intern from a graduate program every year, and I consider this a way to give students opportunities and expose them to new research interests; I plan to keep the scope of my hiring wide and will be looking at outreach from institutions that serve underrepresented students, like HBCUs. Similarly, a lot of MSR researchers take on voluntary academic supervision or service appointments: some serve as diversity chairs for conferences, and many sit on PhD committees. I’m already discussing co-supervising some postdocs, and opportunities for more machine learning education at Gallaudet. I would say that not limiting my mentorship options to the boxes that academia provides for me may foster more creativity, and I’m looking forward to how I carry this out in the future. 

Overall, my interview at MSR left a major impact on me. And this meant I had a very difficult decision to make: my offer at MSR came at the same time as an offer from a major Canadian university. I remember sitting at my desk with both offers side-by-side, and thinking how my offer from academia was everything I had ever wanted. Even when I was a child, my parents had always encouraged me to go into higher education, because they said that with my disability, public institutions would be willing to accommodate me but not private companies. In some respects, I had been groomed into viewing academia as the place for me, and I also feel like this story is true for many other disabled people. I think this is a motivating factor behind much of the activism around accessibility in higher education, because there is a dissonance between the way we are trained to see academia as a sanctuary, and the way it actually is in practice. But in the end, my industry offer won out. It promised a brighter future, without many of the things that I had settled for as a matter of “this is just the way things are” in academia. While we will see if those promises bear fruit, for me, the risk is worth it.

By day, Alex Lu is a computational biologist whose research focuses on artificial intelligence that can “teach themselves” biology in large-scale microscopy datasets through puzzle-solving and interaction. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and will be starting as a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in September. By night, he is a Deaf-queer community organizer. He previously served as a board director for the BC Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf, the frank theatre company, and OPIRG-Toronto. His work as a journalist focuses on the intersection between disability, queer, and racial communities.

6 Ways to Dismantle Barriers for Disabled Faculty on Campus

-Stephanie Cawthon

This is a repost from Dr. Stephanie Cawthon’s blog, where she explores topics such as educational access, equity, attainment and deafness. ‘6 Ways to Dismantle Barriers for Disabled Faculty on Campus‘ was originally posted on April 8, 2021, along with a downloadable infographic.

As higher education strives to be more inclusive and open to all, historical barriers are being dismantled. Yet these efforts often overlook a key group: disabled faculty. 

Faculty are an essential part of any campus. Expectations for their work are high — develop and teach courses, advise and mentor students, and serve their institutions and fields of study. Doing this well provides a critical foundation for students to prosper and grow, but it is a demanding, dynamic, and complex juggling act — especially if you factor in disabilities that are frequently unconsidered, unacknowledged, and unaccommodated. 

I have participated in committees that discuss campus accessibility, often as the only disabled faculty member. There’s a lot of work to be done. Here are six ways to get started and support disabled faculty on your campus.

Assume faculty do not disclose their disabilities

Many students do not disclose their disabilities when they arrive at college and neither do most faculty, attempting to avoid the persistent negative stigmas against people with disabilities. Faculty who face high stakes decisions for tenure and promotion have even less incentive to disclose. 

Disability is also variable and needs may change. Some physical and mental health conditions are sudden, while some are progressive and may change over time.

Recognize ableism exists on your campus (and work to eliminate it)

Disabled people face discrimination and oppression both in their professional lives and in society as a whole. Ableism — or attitudes and behavior that people without disabilities are more valued than those with disabilities — is embedded in our systems and in the design of our workforces, including academic institutions.

Disabled faculty experience marginalization and microaggressions on a daily basis on campus, including:

• barriers in physical buildings and online classrooms.
• lack of access at all university activities.
• exclusion from disability accommodations and outreach.
• negative assumptions about their contributions to academic life.

Even simple faculty meetings can be challenging and overwhelming for a disabled faculty member to navigate, especially if they are newly hired. 

Include disability in campus diversity efforts

Diversity and equity is at the center of efforts to reduce gaps in opportunity afforded to white, male faculty from high socioeconomic and elite backgrounds. Campus-wide initiatives are on the rise across the nation in an effort to respond to these systemic and historical inequities.

But disabled faculty are often not included in policy or practices geared to increasing diversity. Check the diversity mission statements at your institution. Is disability recognized as a part of campus diversity? Are disabled faculty represented in decision-making about improvements to campus and its climate?

Make it easy to request accommodations and encourage flexible work options

Disabled faculty often face significant institutional and attitude barriers when they disclose their disability and access needs. First and foremost, have a clear and centralized process to make accommodations requests (and have them paid for, so there is no budgetary haggling). This can also reduce the hassle and stress of advocating for access.

Also consider making flexible work options available to all faculty, reducing the need to make special requests based on disability status. As we have learned during the pandemic, flexibility and options that were never before accepted as part of regular workspace interactions are now what we use for everyone.

Ensure all aspects of their job are accessible

Faculty members have many roles within the campus community: teacher, advisor, researcher, committee member, supervisor, advocate. 

When thinking about accommodations, institutions often focus only on what is needed for formal instruction or when the faculty member is in class with students. Institutions instead must think holistically about accessibility — how to provide equal access to all of the social, cultural, and interpersonal aspects of campus life. At your college:

• How do disabled faculty engage with students during office hours or colleagues during meetings? 
• Are there captions on videos displayed around campus?
• Are accessibility supports available for guest lectures and events? 
• Can faculty members be included via video platforms if physically coming to campus isn’t possible? 

Lead with intention

A culture of access must come from the top. And it must come quickly. Each experience of ableism and inaccessibility is cumulative, resulting in a significant psychological and emotional toll. Disabled faculty are often tired and demoralized, and feel unwelcome in academia. This chronic marginalization can become itself a barrier, above and beyond the policies and behaviors of the institution.

To Hear, or Not to Hear? The Mental Gymnastics of Hearing Device Use

Alt text. A word cloud showing the most common appearing words in the post in different colors.

-Sarah Sparks

I had planned to write this post about listening fatigue, but as I began writing I realized that a related yet rarely discussed topic resonated more in the moment. This post is my attempt at addressing the complexity of that topic.

The mental gymnastics involved in deciding whether and/or when to use hearing devices is not discussed often—at least publicly. This can be an uncomfortable topic because the decisions about amplification use made by deaf and hard of hearing people have an impact on how we are viewed within our professions, the willingness of other people to take our accommodation needs seriously, and the assumptions made by others about our communication needs and preferences. Ideally, decisions about amplification use should be made freely. That doesn’t always happen in the context of an audist society. Some might argue that because of audism (the belief that hearing and speaking are superior to deafness and signing, and the consequent discrimination), none of these decisions are ever truly free.

I am against audism in all its forms, and I also believe it is possible to genuinely like and want amplified sound for its own sake, not because of attempts to assimilate to the hearing world. But perhaps more often than we would like to admit, deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) professionals who use hearing devices make decisions about device use based on what others expect rather than what feels best to us as individuals. 

I identify as deaf. I am a full-time, bilateral cochlear implant (CI) user who also communicates in and loves both American Sign Language (ASL) and English. In times past I would wear my CI processors from the moment I woke up in the morning until about an hour before going to bed at night, sometimes topping 18 hours of device use in a day. That was exhausting, and I’m glad that I have since found a CI use pattern more suited to my needs. These days I am still a full-time CI user in that my device use averages approximately 8 hours per day, but rarely do I use my processors outside of professional situations. I’m a pediatric audiologist, and I work with many hearing children and their parents as well as the hearing parents of deaf and hard of hearing children. I care about communicating with all of them in their native language whenever possible. Because of this, my processors go on as soon as I walk into clinic in the morning and they come off as soon as I’m on my way home in the evening. If I have class or a meeting in the evening, generally I will keep them on for that purpose. 

Mostly, I’m comfortable with my current CI usage. But my choices come with unique kinds of personal and professional costs that affect neither hearing professionals nor deaf professionals who don’t use devices. The decision to use my CIs as frequently (or infrequently) as I do has a downside that I don’t discuss often: the constant need to evaluate why I use them (or not). Every day, I notice how my decisions interact with others’ conscious and subconscious expectations for me not just as a deaf person, but also as a person with auditory access. Confident as I am in my decisions to switch up my communication—ASL, spoken English, or written English depending on the situation—often I find myself wondering about my CI use pattern and messages that others may infer, independent of anything I say directly.

Does using my CIs full time lead others to believe that I value spoken language over signed language? Maybe I need to clarify every other day that I love ASL and that spoken-language access isn’t the only reason I use my CIs…

Do my coworkers and other acquaintances see my CIs and assume that if my processors are on, they should always speak instead of sign? Maybe I should use my processors only when I want people to speak to me, but then I wouldn’t get to use them for many of the sounds I genuinely want to hear…

How does my CI use impact the willingness of employers and conference/event organizers to fulfill requests for accommodations? In the past, people have heard the clarity of my speech and thought I was exaggerating when I described the limits of my CI hearing. Maybe I’ll have to explain for the thousandth time that my speech is so clear because I wasn’t born deaf, lost my hearing progressively, and don’t hear nearly as well as I speak. Maybe this is why some deaf professionals who can hear and speak choose not to…

If I prefer to speechread my way through certain kinds of interactions, am I leading others to believe that I don’t need visual language? Maybe the access problems I experience are my own fault for opting to communicate in two languages…

If I remove my CI processors for a few hours while among colleagues in my profession, will they see me as irresponsible and make wrong assumptions about how I counsel my own CI patients? Maybe they’ll lose trust in me as a clinician or researcher and assume that I’m recommending lackadaisical or capricious device use…

My signing is clearly non-native: if I’m around other deaf professionals, is wearing my processors (even without batteries) necessary to remind them that I’m not a hearing person? Maybe they’ll see me as just another hearing audiologist if I’m not wearing them… or despite my wearing them…

Are my CIs sending the message that deaf/HoH people can be audiologists and hearing scientists only if we use CIs? Maybe I’m hurting someone else’s opportunities unintentionally just by trying to be deaf in the way that feels most okay for me…

What message does my observable CI use pattern send about deaf/HoH professionals who don’t use hearing devices at all or use their devices differently than I do? Maybe my own decisions affect whether they can get their access needs met…These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when I’m deciding whether to turn on my artificial, electronic auditory access. Needing to think through these and other costs of my CI use pattern is almost as exhausting as listening fatigue itself. Multiple times a day, I have to decide which is more important: using my CIs in the ways that feel best to me, or using them in ways that are least likely to result in negative consequences for me and other deaf/HoH professionals. Every day, I have to decide which battles I’m willing to fight and how my choices about CI use affect my ability to do so. I know that I can’t be the only deaf CI user who struggles with navigating these concerns both inside and outside of academia.

Alt text. A dark haired woman, with hair pulled back and dark-framed glasses is smiling. She wears a dark colored blazer and has a cochlear implant.

Dr. Sarah Sparks: Dr. Sparks holds a clinical Doctorate in Audiology (Au.D.) from Gallaudet University. She has experience in a variety of clinical settings, including a university clinic, private practice, school for the deaf, and two pediatric hospitals. She completed her final year of clinical education at Boston Children’s Hospital where she also held a fellowship in the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program. She is currently studying at Gallaudet for a Ph.D. in Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences. Her clinical and research interests include pediatrics, vestibular assessment and rehabilitation, cochlear implants, the audiologist’s role in counseling and self-advocacy skill development, and audiology services provided in American Sign Language. Her Ph.D. dissertation research will focus on vestibular dysfunction and its impact on deaf/HoH children.

When to tell? Applying for jobs when you are deaf or hard of hearing

-Ana

Going on the job market was a fraught decision for me. As a postdoc considering tenure-track faculty positions, I relied on hearing aids and lip-reading for communication, but, due to my background, I was unaware not just of assistive technologies that could help with communication, but of the very existence of campus offices dedicated to providing accommodations. My struggles in grad school and as a postdoc had left me with severe doubts (enough to fill another blog post) about whether academia was a career path I could follow. Despite my misgivings, a supportive advisor encouraged me to try my hand at the job market, thus setting the stage for a second set of excruciating decisions to be made: What should I tell the search committees about my hearing loss? When should I reveal it? How much should I tell?

If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Ryan Seslow’s wonderful post about the numerous concerns a deaf/hard-of-hearing (HoH) applicant might have concerning equal consideration from search committees. Regardless of regulations to prevent discrimination (and such rules likely do not exist in every country), every step of the hiring process has potential for bias against candidates with hearing loss. Also sobering is Michele’s recent post about the leaky pipeline for deaf and hard-of-hearing academics. Could bias against deaf/HoH candidates during the hiring process contribute to the “leaks”? The topic of disclosing (or not) disabilities to employers has even been recently featured in the New York Times, and I have just now picked up a fascinating book of collected essays about disclosing disability in higher education. With this backdrop, it is clear that deciding what to tell and when is not a decision to be taken lightly.

With these concerns in mind, in summer 2019 The Mind Hears solicited responses to a very short survey about when folks chose to reveal their deafness. The 25 survey responders spanned people in a range of positions and career stages, with at least two actively on the
market, and the rest ranging from postdocs to lecturers, faculty on and off tenure tracks, researchers, and at least one retired professor. The survey showed that preferred communication methods varied widely, with a great majority of respondents reporting that they rely primarily on speech reading and hearing aids, but a little over 40% use sign language (Fig. 1).

While the number of responses prevents an comprehensive treatise on how deaf/HoH academics approach the job search process, this survey does provide a series of snapshots of choices that have been made—and why they have been made. Many personal factors can play a role in these decisions—such as upbringing, prior positive or negative experiences in disclosing hearing loss, primary mode of communication, career stage, and the type of institution applying to. Cultural shifts in social climate may also influence whether a strategy may be more appealing today than it was 20 years ago. Regardless of the limitations of the survey, as you sift through these snapshots of experiences, you may find something that resonates with your history or that gives you an idea of how to move forward in your own job search.

The first question we asked was: At what point in your job application for a professional position have you chosen to reveal your deafness? Among our respondents, the most common choice was “upon being invited to the interview,” followed by two polar opposites: “never” or “in the application materials”(Fig. 2). Various minor choices involved situational circumstances, the fact that application materials strongly suggested (but did not overtly reveal) deafness, or revealing only once the job offer was accepted.

What prompted people to make their choice? Those who never revealed their deafness or revealed it late in the process (during the interview or upon acceptance) expressed strong concerns about bias. Here is a sample of replies:

“ I have been rejected before the interview which I assume is because of my disclosure of being deaf.”

 “Not wanting to make a fuss, not wanting to give them the opportunity to [discriminate], thinking that I could get by without them knowing anyway.”

“worried about discrimination and also feel[ing] that it doesn’t affect my ability to do job so it isn’t any of their business.”

For those who revealed their deafness upon being invited to interview, the overriding concern was that their application would be evaluated without prejudice, but that performance during the interview would not be misinterpreted:

“I want to be upfront about the reason why I may asking ‘what’ more often than the hearing person so it doesn’t reflect poorly on me. It’s not that I’m not listening, it’s just that I physically couldn’t hear you.”

 “You need to make sure you are able to hear in the interview, and prepare the interviewers for any gaps in understanding that occur as a result of your not hearing them well.”

 “I want my resume to be read without any bias. If my resume gets selected for interview, it is based on my merits. So, at that time I let the interviewer know about my deafness to get necessary accommodations for a smooth conversation. However, I understand that even at that stage the bias can creep in.”

 “I like to be upfront and let the interviewer know that I will be using VRS [Video Relay Service]—I want a workplace that will be open to my being Deaf so like to bring it up as early as possible in a relatively nonchalant way.”

 “I didn’t want my disability to determine whether or not I would be invited to campus. I didn’t want interviewers to think I was strange if I tried to pass as a hearing person, so I told the committee that invited me for the interview.”

Those who chose to reveal their deafness early on, in the application materials, felt that valuable information about them would be lost without a reveal, or knew practices in their field would require challenging communication situations arising early in the process:

“I had one significant outreach in the Deaf community and wanted institutions to know that would likely be part of my service as a professor.”

 “The job was for a post in a university as a deaf studies and sign language lecturer, so it was advantageous to tell them at that time.”

“Most jobs in my field do first round interviews via Skype or Zoom and I cannot hear the committee members.”

We then asked: What accommodations have you requested during job interviews, and how have these requests been received? In my case, this question brought back painful memories. Because the concept of asking for accommodation was so foreign to me—I had an ingrained belief that my “problem” was mine alone to solve—the only accommodation I requested was that my host repeat all audience questions for me. I still cringe at recalling the most challenging part of my interview days—lunch with the graduate students, generally a large group, with many too shy to speak loudly. I had the terrified feeling that if I as much as glanced down at my pizza slice I was going to miss an incredibly important question from a person across the room whom I could not hear nor speech read. Fortunately, some respondents were much more savvy than I was, though, as you may expect, the answers were as diverse as deaf/HoH individuals can be.

Some folks opted not to request accommodations or to bring their own communication tools or approaches:

“None; I don’t want to doom my chances from the start.”

“None, I bring my own FM system and do my own research about the panel beforehand to see if there may be any additional concerns for speech reading.”

 “I reveal my HoH state right up front as soon as we’re introduced, explain that I might need to ask them to repeat themselves and [if] necessary, ask people to move closer.”

Several job seekers mentioned orchestrating seating arrangements in order to facilitate communication:

“I did not request formal accommodations but did ask for clarification within conversations and chose my seats carefully at meals [so that I could follow conversation].”

“Rearranging a room for my job talk in order to make the seating shallower and to make it more easy for me to walk up to folks during the Q&A.”

“No specific accommodations. I’ve told people I needed to see their face to lipread, and sometime I’ve asked to sit in a different place to help with lipreading. I see this as casually saying I have a hearing impairment, if needed, rather than formally declaring it as a disability.”

 Some job seekers explicitly requested accommodations for the interviews with mixed responses:

 “Used CART or written questions for onsite interviews; Caption phone for phone interviews. 60% of the time, it was not an issue. At other times, people did not understand the accommodation process and tried to speak instead of writing questions, or say like “I don’t know why, but he is using a special phone”, even after having informed about it in advance. At that time, I had to repeat the need for accommodation.”

 “I have used interpreters in interviews and this practice generated all kinds of rude and/or illegal inquiries. I have had an interpreter blocked from parts of the all-day academic dog-and-pony-show interview on the grounds it was the “confidential” part (only to find the other party sitting with his back to the bright window, rocking post-stroke half-face paralysis and a Western movie sheriff moustache).”

“Sign language interpreters, request was very positively received.”

Ultimately, our worry is that conscious or unconscious bias will lead search committees to assume that we are not suitable for the positions. But how to limit the effect of bias when we communicate our needs? We asked respondents how they reassured committees of their job suitability. Some suggested highlighting the unique strengths of being deaf/HoH:

 “I make sure to show the positive aspects as they would relate to the job, ‘I have these sets of skills and they would assist me in this position in the following way.’ These are not just skills that ‘make up for’ my hearing, but skills that I have [that] add an advantage over hearing individuals or individuals that don’t speech read or know sign language. Being multilingual is typically a plus on a search.”

 “My PhD advisor and I talked about how he would describe my deafness within his letter of recommendation. I had some concerns that he would take a ‘pitying’ tone and in our conversation I was able to suggest to him some ways to frame my hearing loss as one of my characteristics rather than as a challenge to be overcome. He seemed to understand so I trusted that his letter would assuage any fears of the committee. My PhD advisor had also been impressed with the significant effort that I had put into disability advocacy during my PhD. I believe that he framed this as my passion for serving the community.”

A few job seekers were confident that the search committee would judge their strong qualification fairly:

“I trust that my CV speaks for itself, as well as outlining my capabilities/communication methods in my covering letter.”

 “My qualifications show suitability in and of itself, confidence is key and knowing exactly what accommodations I need.”

Sadly, also common among survey respondents were concerns that the whole process is unfairly stacked against deaf/HoH applicants, or that the only way to be perceived as competent is to disclose as little as possible:

“My work history speaks for itself. I’ve been teaching for 13 years […]. But since I rarely make it to interview stage, I don’t even get to reassure the committee members of my suitability for the job.”

“After several interviews where both having an interpreter (‘do we have to pay a second person to have you work here??’) and not having an interpreter (‘but her answer to my question was not what I asked. She should have had an interpreter if she could not hear me’) did not work, I made a deal with the devil to get a [cochlear implant] so that I could fake it through the interview as a HoH person, just showing them that I could fit in. I did not draw a great deal of attention to my deafness. I know people on the search committee and the hiring Dean knew that I was deaf and used interpretation in other settings. However, I wasn’t going to bring it up if they didn’t. Surprisingly enough, that actually did work. I kept my head down and did minimal committee service and very non-interactive classroom style teaching until I was tenured before I began [to ask] for interpreting. The more interpreting I have had access to since then, the more effective my overall professional performance has been. It is a shame that businesses only see the cost of it, and not the performance improvement.”

Because the role of search committees is essentially to eliminate applicants, the job application process is a loaded situation for all, deaf/HoH or not. And it tends to be pretty easy for search committees to come up with reasons not to hire somebody, regardless of any anti-bias regulations put in place. As a result, it is also nearly impossible to prove that a hiring committee has discriminated based on an applicant being deaf/HoH. However, the fact that communication is such a critical and continuous component of academic jobs greatly increases the possibility that our deafness will be erroneously perceived to compromise our likelihood of academic success — before we even get a chance to prove prejudices wrong. There is no easy fix for this; the only one I can think of is to normalize the presence of deaf/HoH academics to the extent that any request for accommodation is seen as routine. Those of us who already hold positions have a role to play here, perhaps in being more forward about requesting accommodations, and in making sure that our deafness is recognized by colleagues and administrators. We should also make sure that diversity initiatives in academia explicitly incorporate disability as an important facet of diversity.

We are very grateful to all people who responded to the survey and were willing to share their experiences with us. Thank you for taking the time to share your stories. Such sharing can only help all of us, and we hope others will feel inspired to keep on paying it forward in the comments below.

Mandated equal opportunity hiring may not ensure equal considerations by hiring committees: A hypothetical scenario

-Ryan

Imagine that you are a deaf/hard-of-hearing (HoH) person applying for a full-time academic position in a U.S. public institution of higher learning. The position is listed nationally across multiple job boards. At the offering institution, deaf/HoH faculty, students, administrators, and staff members represent 1% of the population. You are highly qualified and display an extensive résumé with many accomplishments in your field and a strong history of service. Information about you is highly transparent on the internet at large.

You investigate and discover that the offering department does not currently have a deaf or hard-of-hearing person among their full-time and adjunct faculty.

Applying for the position:

When applying, you check the general “YES, I have a disability” box on the institution’s application and contact the human resources (HR) department directly to let them know that you are applying specifically as a deaf/HoH person. If you are offered an interview for the position, you request, as is your right, to meet with the search committee in person, rather than have the interview over a conference call. You cross your fingers, hoping that the HR department communicates with the department offering the position to ensure that they are presenting an equal opportunity for employment for those with disabilities. Does the HR department actually communicate your request for accommodation to the academic department? You may never know but let’s say that it does in this case…

Considerations of the hiring committee:

When the academic department’s search committee learns that you are deaf/HoH how will they respond? Are they experienced in the process of interviewing a deaf or hard-of-hearing person? How many interviews have they given to deaf/HoH applicants in the past? How many of those previous applicants were given an interview, made it to the second or third round of the process, and hired full-time? Where are the statistics to prove that equal opportunities are being given?

When the search committee learns of your request to meet in person for an interview because you are deaf/HoH, how aware and educated are the search committee members of Deaf culture and what it means to be deaf or hard of hearing? How aware are they of what it means to be a deaf/HoH faculty member teaching in a mainly all-hearing environment? Do they know the benefits of having a deaf or hard-of-hearing person as a part of their full-time or part-time faculty? What evidence is there within the department’s current publications, seminars, exhibitions, faculty development, and outreach efforts of awareness of the advantages brought about by workplace diversity that is inclusive of disability?

Is the typical academic faculty search committee equipped, skilled, and supportive enough to interview a deaf/HoH candidate if none of their members are deaf or hard of hearing? If they don’t have deaf/HoH members, are they sufficiently trained in deaf/HoH experiences to judge your application fairly against the numerous other applicants who do not have any disabilities? Are search committees trained enough to distinguish between medical and cultural models of disability, and to understand how these models impact their perceptions of your strengths? Are they savvy enough to move away from focusing on what the you can’t do, and focus instead on what your diverse perspective brings to the hiring unit?

Answers to many of the questions I ask above should be part of the public record. My experience in the job search circuit thus far has left me disillusioned and believing that departmental search committees and HR departments are likely ill-equipped to handle deaf/HoH applicants. Studies have shown that search committees have many implicit biases. One of these biases is that since deafness may impede academic success, it is safer to hire a hearing applicant.

It’s time to fix this.

Have you ever been a on a faculty search committee where a deaf or hard-of-hearing person applied? If so, did that person receive the position? If not, would you like to share your experience?