Earlier this year, a British Deaf couple made headlines when they complained about the lack of an interpreter during their baby’s birth. Things aren’t any better across the Atlantic, as this story from America shows.
Extract from the Miami Herald:
Sometime this month or next, Cheylla Silva will be admitted to Baptist Hospital to give birth to her second child. The delivery will be high-risk: Silva suffers from high blood pressure and other complications.
Silva is hoping the delivery goes smoothly because if there are serious problems, she might be at a loss to communicate with her doctors and nurses. Silva is profoundly deaf, and, for months, Baptist administrators have refused to provide her with an American sign language interpreter, she says.
On Friday morning, Silva filed an emergency motion in federal court, asking U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams to order Baptist to provide the interpreter, arguing the hospital’s refusal to do so violates the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, a landmark civil rights law signed by then-President George Bush in 1990.
Baptist’s obligation, the suit says, “is to ensure that deaf patients be provided an equal opportunity to participate in their care and treatment.”
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Cathy Alexandeŕ
September 3, 2014
This is a surprising and shocking story. It is quite well known how Deaf Americans are streets ahead of Deaf people in the UK, not least because they are usually far more confident and blase than we are over here.
So to hear this story of an interpreter being refused to a deaf person is quite a revelation!
I know different laws fit different states but I doubt this one applies in this case.
Today’s generation are lucky in both America and the UK in so far as interpreters are concerned. No such support was available when I gave birth to my children, only mum was present. Although am not sure I would want an interpreter present as its too personal.
But, today is today and times have irrevocably changed. Moreover, that change should be for the better, not the worse.
How is it that we seem to be going backwards instead of forwards? How can deaf people be denied a basic right in 2014? Where is everyone’s compassion, empathy or common sense? How can so many people in powerful positions be devoid of these attributes? Why do deaf people have to spend their lives battling for basic access that “joe bloggs” in the street takes for granted?
Personally, I have recently won a battle of my own: I took one of the “power six” arrogant utility companies to court for denying me access to an interpreter, and subsequently won after a very stressful 2.5yrs!
I hope this couple have similar success, even though its the other side of the atlantic. We must all stand up and be counted, we are not invisible; not stupid; not second class citizens and deserve to be treated justly and fairly in this world.