Lack of resources, support make Oregon challenging for people who are deaf

Jeb Baldridge had a decision to make when he graduated from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., where he majored in deaf studies. He noticed many deaf people did not go back to their hometowns after college, but instead sought communities where there was an established deaf population.

“Imagine if you are in some strange land and everyone is speaking a different language,” Baldridge said. “You’d feel very out of place. I think for a deaf person, they have that experience permanently. And so, they’re always looking for that community and that comfort.”

But Baldridge, who is a native Oregonian, loves his home state and the city of Portland. He knew that he had to come back to his family — but he also knew many challenges would face him.

Today he lives in the Southeast Portland neighborhood of Mount Tabor and serves as the president of the Oregon Association of the Deaf.

He said Oregon doesn’t have a lot of support services or resources for deaf people. On top of that, organizations and clubs serving people who are deaf are hardly present, which doesn’t allow for a centralized deaf community. Because of this, the deaf community in Oregon doesn’t have the opportunity to socialize in the same ways other communities do.

“That’s a concern, and I would love for something like that to grow here in Oregon,” Baldridge said.

Baldridge said he saw a lot of deaf clubs in the 1970s and ’80s, but they began to dwindle after the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed. The law allowed parents to put their deaf children into public school, which helped deaf children have equal access to education. However, that change meant that deaf children were often isolated from other children who were deaf, causing the deaf community to lose the built-in connections it used to have.

This was evident for Baldridge when he worked at Portland Community College as an American Sign Language instructor. While he was there, a student who was deaf told Baldridge he was looking for a woman to date who was also deaf. Baldridge gave him the few resources he knew for deaf people in the area to socialize. But because the student had grown up in a mainstream school, he had a hard time socializing with other deaf people, and Baldridge had to help him through it.

Baldridge said that the younger generation of people who are deaf meet mostly online and find community online instead of at clubs for deaf people. And now, there are only a few events for deaf people to come together to socialize. There’s Portland Deaf Night Out, which used to occur once a month, and an event held by Prism of Portland once every three months.

Greater Portland Club for the Deaf used to meet at a building on Northeast 33rd Avenue and Alberta Street, but the rent increases forced it out. The club never found a new place to meet that was affordable and accessible for the community.

Adding to these social barriers, Baldridge said, he has noticed many people who are deaf have been further isolated because of mask wearing.

Masks are a problem for those who depend primarily on lip-reading and for the many deaf and hard-of-hearing people who rely on mouth movements and facial expressions for basic communication, said Howard A. Rosenblum, CEO of the National Association of the Deaf. Rosenblum said there are 48 million Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Baldridge said he recently saw a Facebook post that told the story of a deaf person who noticed a cashier’s mouth moving underneath their mask. As they tried to figure out what the cashier was saying, they realized the cashier was only chewing gum.

In its “Statewide Mask, Face Shield, Face Covering Guidance” statement, Oregon Health Authority noted that while not required, businesses are responsible for training their employees to remove their masks for individuals who need to communicate through facial expressions or reading lips.

But removing masks should be done with caution, Baldridge said. He said by removing a mask to talk to a deaf person, a hearing person puts the deaf person at risk of COVID-19. Especially if they’re in close proximity, because hearing people project their voices, which may cause particles to fly through the air. Baldridge said that when a mask has to be removed to communicate, keeping distance is necessary.

This is in light of the Oregon Health Authority’s July 1 report stating Oregon had a record high number of daily COVID-19 cases. On the same day, Gov. Kate Brown’s mandate requiring that all Oregonians wear face coverings in indoor public spaces went into effect.

Baldridge said he now takes his “emergency kit,” a pad of paper and a pen, with him when he leaves the house. He was raised in a generationally deaf family and said he’s used to carrying around a pen and paper. It feels like going back to the “old days,” he said.

“We always had a pen and paper with us in the car, and we were always ready with notepads,” Baldridge said. “That was a resource that was available to us if we were ordering food, if we were going to the store, for any reason.”

A mask with a transparent panel allows for better communication with people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Baldridge said he went to a deaf high school in California that relied on ASL and visual learning, whereas Portland has a strong history of oralism, a system of deaf education that relies on lip reading and speech. For that community, he hopes that face coverings are temporary and that more people in public utilize face shields in front of their face instead of masks that cover their mouths.

The Hearing, Speech & Deaf Center has online instructions for making a deaf-friendly mask with fabric and clear plastic.

Baldridge said it was his concerns about the lack of resources for Oregon’s deaf communities that propelled Baldridge into advocacy. Since his inauguration at the Oregon Association of the Deaf in March, his primary focus has been on making sure the deaf community has a legislative presence.

His team is working with the Oregon Registry of Interpreters to make sure that all American Sign Language interpreters are licensed. Baldridge said that Oregon has had a long-standing problem of working, unlicensed interpreters.

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It’s a problem he’s experienced firsthand. He said at a meeting with Oregon Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services in Southern Oregon, the person interpreting the meeting was doing a poor job.

“I was shocked,” Baldridge said. “A hearing person that was in the meeting thought the deaf person was an idiot because they (the interpreter) made him sound like an idiot, and it was very embarrassing.”

It turned out information the group thought had been wrong was actually only made so because the interpreter misinterpreted it.

“We can’t allow that to happen,” Baldridge said. “It hurts the deaf community.”

He said that even if an interpreter shows up and doesn’t know how to sign, they still get paid for the full two hours, which leads to people abusing the system.

In 2019, Oregon Association of the Deaf brought eight bills to the Oregon Legislature, but none garnered much, if any, support. Senate Bill 1033, would have allowed deaf or hard-of-hearing people to request that their vehicle’s registration card include information that the vehicle’s owner or operator is deaf or hard of hearing. This would help to prevent miscommunication between deaf people and police officers. It was the only piece of legislation from the association to be reviewed in committee, and it never made it to the floor for a vote.

Oregon Association of the Deaf plans to push for a bill in Oregon’s 2021 legislative session that would ensure that deaf people taking a commercial driver’s license test at Oregon Driver & Motor Vehicle Services have access to an ASL interpreter.

Baldridge said he’s committed to looking for ways to support the deaf community in Oregon. His goal, he said, is to turn Oregon into a place where deaf people “could move to and want to stay.”