The Mirror has reported:
A dad travelling with his deaf son claims a bus driver threatened to throw them off because the two-year-old was being too noisy.
Kyle Johnson, 23, was on his way back from a hospital appointment with son Ethan when the boy got excited and started talking loudly.
He says the driver called him over and said other passengers had complained.
Mr Johnson said he was given the ultimatum of either getting Ethan to quieten down or the pair would have to get off.
Thankfully, Mr Johnson managed to lull the toddler to sleep in his pushchair and they stay on the bus.
But he has accused the First bus driver of discrimination.
The supermarket cleaner, from Plymouth, Devon, said: “I explained to the driver that Ethan was deaf, but his response was ‘I really can’t do a lot, I’ve had complaints’.
Read the full article here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bus-driver-threatened-kick-deaf-5248238?ICID=FB_mirror_main
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pennybsl
March 2, 2015
Mainstream inclusion is a fallacy if people do not know how to interact with parents/companions of excitable deaf children in public — instead of running to ‘authorities’ to deal with the issues, causing more social exclusion.
If the were some Deaf-Aware passengers in the bus, the situation could have been defused with advocacy and understanding on the spot.
Administrator
March 2, 2015
This is a difficult one for the driver and the bus company.
From their perspective, if a passenger is making life uncomfortable for other passengers, then, in principle, the driver/company is right to ask them to desist in whatever behaviour is causing the upset or to get off the bus.
It is said here that the child was noisy (speaking loudly). Again, of itself, this could be any child – it wouldn’t need to be a deaf child. It does happen (i.e., that infants are noisy in different ways).
But this child was deaf. Should that make a difference as compared to any other child (or adult passenger, for that matter)? And here is the difficulty. Because the driver/company is required, of course, to make “reasonable adjustments”. What would it be that would constitute the limit of a “reasonable adjustment” in this case? Where is the balance to be drawn between the safety and comfort of passengers generally and the degree of “adjustment” any individual passenger has to make so far as other passengers are concerned? Certainly, on the basis of the information as provided, the other passengers are fully entitled to complain and, it seems, the father tacitly acknowledged they had a point.
The bottom line is straightforward: did the request to ask the father to subdue the child amount to an unreasonable request simply because the child was deaf? In the absence of any other information, I think the father would have a problem showing this was so.
pennybsl
March 2, 2015
Exactly.
The real issue is, if Ethan’s hearing aids / CIs were visible, passengers could have seen and maybe understood the noise…?
We could admit some varieties of ‘Deaf voice’ could be audibly uncomfortable in an enclosed space…but, but, the bus’ engine could have absorbed the sound – or that the bus’ engine noise caused Ethan to talk loudly above it?
Those factors deserve more attention, especially in the media.
Cathy
March 2, 2015
I read this story in the paper and felt sorry for Father and child. It is indeed a difficult case, because complaints usually have to be rectified and this meant “rectifying the child”.
I like Pennybsl’s point: “seeing a CI or hearing aid means people would understand the noise” this is what I used to think, until one day, somebody said to me: “It must be really quiet in a deaf families house!” I smiled wryly and said “no, its the opposite!”
This proves two things: deafness is nowhere near understood in the general population, and Deaf Awareness is never going to reach 64 million people!!! Secondly: If the little boy had a CI or good hearing aid, should he not be hearing himself with it? If so, wouldn’t his voice be quieter? If he has a CI it is unlikely he would be noisy irrespective of the bus’s engine. CI’s are really powerful, so if he has one and is noisy it either means the CI has not long been fitted or it is of little use to him!!
The last point is a pretty big one because if CI’s are useless then hearing parents should not be led to believe they are brilliant contraptions for their deaf children, by the medical profession!!!
deaflinguist
March 2, 2015
To answer Penny’s point: I doubt very much that the engine noise would have absorbed the little boy’s voice as it is low-pitched, and children’s voices, especially if loud, are high-pitched. Actually, the clash of high vs low pitch is part of what is so uncomfortable for hearers because it comprises two competing noises, neither of which can drown out the other because they are at different frequencies, so it becomes overwhelming.
I agree that folks should cut each other some slack and that a bit of empathy and understanding and general awareness of deafness gets everybody a bit further on, instead of stuck in the same old tramlines. But equally, there are some people who just cannot bear the sound of very loud children. Children have high-pitched voices for a good evolutionary reason – to attract attention when necessary – but it isn’t necessarily a pleasant sound (hearing or deaf children alike). It really isn’t a good sound for people who might be suffering from anxiety or have hyperacusis or who are autistic and suffer from sensory overload, for example – people don’t always complain groundlessly because they are tut-tutting killjoys that don’t understand disability, they might have impairments too that we might not understand.
The best we can all do in these circumstances is make allowances for one another and be polite and considerate to our fellow passengers on public transport, as a little effort and consideration by all goes a long way!
Deafnotdaft
March 5, 2015
This looks like a storm in a teacup to me. People complain about a noisy child on a bus. The driver tells the parent to quieten the child down or get off. So the parent quietens the child down.
True, the driver’s customer-skills left something to be desired. But what’s the big deal?