Tag Archives: Drisana Levitzke-Gray

Who’s disabled?

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Hearing and deaf

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

IMG_3831_Crop

A few years ago, lolling about in Mum and Dad’s pool with one of my sisters, she and I had a conversation about disability politics, during which I referred to myself as disabled.

My sister stopped lolling and stared at me.

“You’re not disabled!” she said, shocked.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “You and I don’t see me as disabled, but society does.”

“I’ve never thought of you as disabled,” she said. “It’s never occurred to me to think of you that way! You’re just you. A bit different. But disabled? No way!”

A few days later, she said, “I can’t get over this idea of you as disabled! I’m so shocked. It’s ridiculous that people see you that way!”

On Monday 13th July, appearing on ABC channel 24 with the other 2015 Australians of the Year, Young Australian of the Year Drisana Levitzke-Gray said: “Deaf people don’t see ourselves as disabled. We see it as deaf gain rather than hearing loss.”

It wasn’t long before someone named Tony commented on Twitter: “You don’t have a sense of hearing. Deaf people are disabled. Deal with it.”

Drisana said many things during this live television broadcast. She talked about being the fifth generation of deaf activists in her family, four of them women, and about deaf people’s human rights, in particular their right to use Auslan. She talked about the need for access.  She talked about the government cutting Deaf Australia’s funding and the impact this has on advocacy for deaf people’s human rights. She talked about how she deals with criticism and people’s expectations of her. But this one small comment about disability was the one thing Tony homed in on.

Who’s this guy Tony? Who cares what he thinks?

But his comment is typical of the social attitude I was referring to in my conversation with my sister.

It is typical of the bigotry exemplified many years ago by a journalist who, when I objected to his use of the term ‘deaf and dumb’, said that it was a perfectly acceptable term to use because all his friends used it.

It is typical of the widespread practice in our society of seeing anyone who is different as ‘other’ and in need of changing to fit whatever is perceived as the ‘norm’.

This question of whether or not deaf people are disabled arises regularly. Deaf people often talk about it. Deaf people and hard of hearing people don’t always agree about it. Non-deaf people are frequently baffled by it.

Hard of hearing people or people who become deaf later in life often do experience their deafness as a loss and see themselves as disabled. Many of these people refer to themselves as hearing-impaired.

For people who are born deaf or become deaf early in their life, being deaf is a normal state of being, we don’t feel we have lost anything, and we dislike the term hearing-impaired: we don’t see ourselves as impaired.

For many of us, being deaf adds a dimension to our life. It brings a different way of experiencing and interacting with the world. When we embrace Auslan and the Deaf community, it brings us a wonderfully rich and expressive language, a unique culture and a world-wide community of friends, understanding, acceptance and belonging that transcends borders, race, religion, gender, politics.

This was what Drisana was talking about when she used the term ‘deaf gain’.

But people like Tony find this hard to understand. Indeed, they often don’t even stop to think about what Drisana might have meant. They see only the absence of hearing and see attempts to explain this different ‘deaf gain’ reality as a denial of reality – their reality.

I was often asked about this issue during the years I was an advocate with Deaf Australia. Many people pointed out that organisations like Deaf Australia received funding from disability programs. How then, they asked, could we say we weren’t disabled?  We had to decide what we were one way or the other, we couldn’t have it both ways.

Ah but we could, I argued. And this is how I explained it:

Disability is relative. If you’re a hearing person and you can’t sign, and you walk into a room full of deaf people communicating in Auslan, who’s disabled?  You or all these deaf people?  Who needs an interpreter?  You or all these deaf people?

By ourselves, and with each other, deafness doesn’t disable us, we just find our own ways of doing things.

It is when we go out into an environment designed by people who hear, for people who hear, that we become disabled. It is not our deafness that disables us, it is the environment, limitations and expectations that are imposed on us by others who are unlike us.

For six years from 2008 to 2013 I was a member of the National People with Disabilities and Carers Council, which provided advice to the Minister and Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities. The Council, a large and wonderfully eclectic group, was handpicked mainly by Bill Shorten and after its first meeting, a group of us sat in the Qantas lounge at Canberra airport, discussing how we’d first met Bill Shorten and how unusual he was for a politician in that he seemed to ‘get it’ about disability.

I related the story of how I’d used the ‘in a room full of deaf people, who’s disabled?’ explanation when I first met Bill. In our group was Milly Parker, who went on to become a well-known disability advocate. Milly, who has a brain injury, runs her own business, making gourmet dog food and selling it internationally.

She listened to my story and said, “That’s right, Karen! In my business and my home everything is set up in a way that works for me and I’m not disabled. I only become disabled when I go out into a different environment and other people put their expectations and limitations on me.”

During many years of working with people with all kinds of ‘disability’ I have learned that deaf people aren’t the only ones who don’t see themselves as disabled. We aren’t the only ones who wish that other people would stop trying to change us and put road blocks in our way.

Elizabeth Hastings, the first Disability Discrimination Commissioner put it this way:

“…disability is part of the human community… Certainly disability is not always convenient, attractive or desirable, but it is an ordinary attribute of being human. Even though my disability is also not especially convenient, attractive or desirable, it is my life and I have absolutely no wish for it to be otherwise. Not everybody will feel the same way about his or her circumstances. However many people with disabilities do think and feel the way I do – that we do not wish to be altered, cured or transformed. We do wish our equipment would work reliably, and that education, transport, shopping and professional and other services, work, entertainment, banking, insurance and information were accessible to us.” 1

When I was Executive Officer at Deaf Australia I often worked with Damian Griffis, Executive Officer at First People’s Disability Network. One of the things that Damian often explained at various meetings was that in traditional language there was no word for the concept of disability. Aboriginal people with disability are supported and accepted as members of their community.

So who’s disabled?

Isn’t everyone, in some way, sometime? At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter.  What is important is how we make the most of what we have, how we live our lives, how we treat other people and how our society supports and accepts us.  As Elizabeth Hastings put it, disability is part of the human condition. It’s normal.

And to people who would like to think it isn’t, I say: deal with it.

  1. Hastings, E. 1997. Keynote address. Presented at the Social Options Conference, November 21, Adelaide, Australia.

To do our civic duty

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Politics and deaf

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Jury Duty 5

My friend Gaye Lyons wants to serve on a jury. I don’t.

Lots of people are like Gaye and lots are like me. This is true of hearing people too.

Whether or not we actually want to do it, deaf people should have the right and the responsibility to do their civic duty, alongside hearing citizens. This means that when people like me are called for jury duty, we would do it even though we might not want to, because that is our duty as citizens.

But in Australia the law, or the traditional interpretation of the law, prevents deaf people from serving on a jury. It prevents us from doing our civic duty. It does not treat us as citizens equal to others.

This is essentially what the issue of deaf people and jury duty is about: whether deaf people should be treated as equal citizens and allowed to do our civic duty.

When my friend Gaye Lyons received a summons for jury duty in January 2012 she advised the court that she is deaf and requested an Auslan interpreter. Her request was refused and she was excluded from the selection process on the grounds that she is deaf and couldn’t do it. This has happened to many deaf Australians.

The Disability Discrimination Act makes it illegal to discriminate against people on the grounds of disability. But sometimes one law cancels out another. Sometimes one person’s rights override another person’s rights.

Gaye Lyons feels so strongly about her right, and the right of other deaf people, to serve on a jury and do her civic duty that she decided to challenge the court’s decision. So have others in other states, but Gaye’s is the only challenge that has progressed through the courts.

There has been much hype about Drisana Levitzke-Gray being the first deaf person in Australia to serve on a jury, in Western Australia in January 2014.

But this is a misunderstanding. Drisana did not actually serve on a jury.

She did progress further through the jury selection process than any deaf Australian we know of. When she was summoned for jury duty she requested an Auslan interpreter and was provided with one. She and her interpreter went to the court for the next stage of selection, the random ballot. Names were randomly drawn and those drawn progressed to the next stage. Drisana’s name was not drawn, so she did not progress further in the selection process and did not serve on a jury.

The breakthrough in Drisana’s case was that she was not excluded from the jury process because she was deaf. She was excluded by the random ballot. She was not discriminated against because she was deaf. She was treated as an equal citizen who could do her civic duty, at least up to the random ballot stage in the process. She might have been excluded later in the process because she was deaf, but we don’t know if that would have happened.

Gaye Lyons’ case was heard by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) in June 2013. The Tribunal ruled against her.

She appealed in October 2014. The Tribunal ruled against her appeal.

The Tribunal’s view was that Gaye could not serve on a jury with an interpreter because the interpreter would be a 13th person in the jury room and the jury room must have only 12 people, the jurors.

I’m sure a lot of judges don’t understand the interpreter’s role, how they work and the ethics they abide by. And yet, interpreters already work in the courts when victims, defendants or witnesses are deaf, and even when a lawyer is deaf: Queensland lawyer Kathryn O’Brien has an interpreter when she appears in court. Interpreters worked with Gaye during her QCAT hearings.

Why is the thinking so narrow-minded in relation to the jury?

It seems that researchers have identified that the sticking point is that not enough is known about what happens in the jury deliberation room. Research has shown that with an interpreter, deaf people can access and understand legal evidence and arguments on a par with hearing people, but evidence is needed to show that the interpreter does not interfere with deliberations in the jury room and is not a 13th ‘juror’.1

I’m not going to talk about the legal aspects. I’m not a lawyer. What interests me most is that laws are made by people. Laws are used and interpreted by people. Laws are unmade and changed by people. So although we need to work with the law, it’s the people, and the thinking about these laws that drive it all.

A lot of discussion centres around whose rights should come first, the deaf person’s or the victim’s and defendant’s.

People who maintain that the victim or defendant’s rights should outweigh the deaf person’s tend to brush aside arguments that different people bring different qualities to the jury deliberation.

They also brush aside questions of whether the jury should include deaf people when the victim or defendant is deaf.

Such discussions reveal an underlying assumption that having a deaf person on the jury would not be in the best interests of the victim or defendant, i.e. there is something inferior about deaf people.

Several years ago I was involved in a social media discussion with a couple of hearing people I know who work with the deaf community. One person in particular was adamant that deaf people should not be permitted to serve on a jury because they just cannot do it, even with an interpreter. He said that if he were a victim or defendant he wouldn’t want a deaf person on his jury and his right to a fair trial should override the deaf person’s right to serve on the jury.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by his views. I know that even some people who work with deaf people have low expectations of them. A friend once told me that in a candid moment he asked a hearing colleague why she didn’t like deaf people and she answered: “because they’re not educated.”

It is unusual to see anyone actually say this openly, let alone publicly, but in my Facebook discussion, the hearing person did. At one point he said: “Oh come on, Karen. We both know that so many deaf people don’t get a good education.”

This is true. The education system still does a very poor job of making education accessible and equitable for deaf people. But a poor education isn’t exclusive to deaf people. Many hearing people are not well educated. Yet they are not automatically excluded from jury service.

A jury is supposed to be representative of the community. Deaf people are part of the community. A jury process that automatically excludes people because they are deaf does not provide a true representation of the community on the jury.

Clearly there are people who have an entrenched belief that deaf people are incapable, inferior citizens. No matter how well educated and accomplished many deaf people are, there will always be others who aren’t and it seems that in the minds of many, all of us are tarred with this ‘inferior, uneducated’ brush.

What kind of civil society are we when we treat people like this?

But I take heart from the research that is being done by people like Sandra Hale at the University of NSW and Jemina Napier, previously at Macquarie University and now at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. Using mock trials, they are collecting evidence of what actually happens with deaf jurors and interpreters in the jury room.

And there are enlightened lawyers arguing for our right to do our civic duty alongside others. Gaye Lyons has some of the finest on her legal team.

These academics and lawyers are advancing the cause of a more just civil society.

I believe that one day soon our society will change and deaf people will serve on Australian juries. Imagine if this then leads to social justice in education! After all, people who are considered equal citizens should have equitable education shouldn’t they?

In her quest for this change for all of us, Gaye Lyons has now appealed to the Queensland Court of Appeal, on the advice of her barristers. Her appeal will be heard, with Auslan interpreters of course, on Wednesday 20th May 2015 at 415 George Street, Brisbane.2

I will be there to lend moral support to my friend and to the cause. If you believe in a civil society that treats deaf people as equal citizens, please come along and join us.

Notes:

  1. See Napier, Jemina and McEwin, Alastair, Do deaf people have the right to serve as jurors in Australia? In Alternative Law Journal Vol 40:1, 2015, 23-27.
  2. To find out what time, on Tuesday night do a Google search on ‘daily law lists queensland’ then select ‘Supreme and District Courts’, then ‘Brisbane’. The Court of Appeal list, showing names and times, should be at the top of the list.