The near-silent nature of the Internet - where audio is a bonus rather than a necessity - has made it an ideal medium for the deaf community. Unlike almost any other communications channel, it allows those with hearing difficulties to use it to the full without any special measures to take account of their disability. Deaf and hard of hearing-related sites have a vibrant presence on the Net, especially in the US and Canada where the deaf community has a powerful political lobby. In Ireland, a growing number of deaf and hard of hearing people are using the Internet and nearly all the major deaf organisations are represented on the Web. The deaf community is coming to depend on the Internet and is making use of its particular strengths. Emma McAuley works with the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) and has a severe to profound high-frequency hearing loss. Despite using an adapted phone at work, she finds it hard to hear specific details over the phone, and the Internet a useful substitute. For Emma McAuley, it "is another level of communication" which allows her to get names and numbers "in black and white".
The Internet is replacing another silent electronic medium - the fax - as the dominant means by which international deaf organisations correspond. Websites and email have enabled Irish deaf organisations to discover what the international organisations are doing and this, Emma McAuley says, creates awareness about what can be achieved by the Irish deaf community and about how to lobby the Government effectively.
Online chat rooms are also popular. Alvean Jones, who is profoundly deaf, has set up her own chat room so she can communicate with a friend in Switzerland: "without having to resort to email messages, or faxes, which are limiting in that they are one way. The Net is excellent for a two-way communication system between us."
Noelle Lee, who holds a degree in Deaf Studies, has been using the Internet for three years. She is hard of hearing and believes that emailing deaf and hearing friends has improved her language and vocabulary. Subscribing to the Deaf E News, the Deaf World Web newsletter, enables her to receive news and information about the deaf community much faster than through other channels. These and other uses of the Net are being taken into account in the education system. A teacher of information technology at St. Joseph's secondary school for deaf boys, Cabra, Mary Archer, says the students at this Dublin school are familiar with the Internet from emailing their parents and from using search engines. "It's in its infancy" at the school, she says, but her aim is to make the boys Net-literate before they leave. "I would love to see them completely independent on it." Nevertheless, most schools are wary of leaving students to explore the Internet unsupervised, she says, because of the danger of accessing unsuitable sites. She cites an example from another school where pupils were asked to do a keyword search under "car". One pupil who typed in "escort" came up with very different results. Mary Archer plans to set up a school website as a resource for other schools with deaf and hard of hearing students. One past pupil of St. Joseph's, Shane Keogh, works part-time with the National Deaf Association. He uses the Internet for everything, especially for sports information and reading online newspapers. Although an enthusiastic user, he has reservations about the usefulness of chat rooms and discussion forums for the deaf community here because of its small size.
In the future, he believes, high-quality cameras allied with PCs connected to the Net will be a huge bonus for deaf people, enabling them to sign as well as to write to each other. The Internet "is like a radio for deaf people" says Stan Foran, editor of Contact magazine. There is "great potential for further developments once more deaf people become Net-literate". The challenge now facing the Irish deaf community is for funding to make Net access more widely available and to educate more of its members in Net skills.
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