A Meaningful Opportunity to Participate
A Handbook for Georgia Court Officials on Courtroom Accessibility
for Individuals with Disabilities
A Handbook for Georgia Court Officials on Courtroom Accessibility
for Individuals with Disabilities
PART II:
Interacting With Persons With Disabilities
Page 2 of 3
Interacting with People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
There is a broad spectrum of hearing loss among Georgians, ranging from mild hearing loss to profound deafness. Most Georgians with hearing loss can be accommodated in court when assistive listening devices are available. However, in certain situations, more individualized accommodations, such as Communication Access Realtime Translations (CART) or sign language interpreters, are necessary to facilitate effective communication with the court.
When interacting with people who are deaf or hard of hearing, consider the following tips:
There are a wide range of hearing losses and communication preferences. If you do not know the individual's preferred communication method, ask.
Make direct eye contact. Natural facial expressions and gestures will provide important information to your conversation. Keep your face and mouth visible when speaking.
Before speaking to a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, get the person's attention. To get a person's attention, call his or her name. If there is no response, lightly touch the person's arm or shoulder.
If you are asked to repeat yourself several times, try rephrasing your sentence.
Writing information down may facilitate communication.
When speaking to a person who lip-reads or is hard of hearing, speak clearly. Do not exaggerate your speech. Shouting does not help communication.
The role of a sign language interpreter is to facilitate communication between people who do not share a common language. Therefore, interpreters should not participate or be included in the communication outside of that role and function.
Good lighting is important to facilitate clear communication.
Range of deafness and hard of hearing:
Individuals who are hard of hearing or late deafened (those who became deaf after acquiring speech and language skills) may use hearing aids, cochlear implants, and/or assistive listening devices to support their residual hearing or they may not use any augmentative devices at all. They may use lip reading skills to facilitate one-on-one communication and may use sign language or oral interpreters in group settings. Individuals who are hard of hearing or late-deafened commonly use spoken English as a method of communicating verbally and may or may not know how to communicate with sign language.
Individuals who are "prelingually" or "culturally" deaf are those who were born deaf or became deaf prior to acquiring speech and language skills. They most likely will use American Sign Language (ASL) or a form of English sign language to communicate and may or may not have lip reading skills. Some individuals may use hearing aids or cochlear implants to augment residual hearing.
Individuals who are deaf-blind are those who are deaf or hard of hearing and are also blind or have low vision (also called partial sight) that cannot be satisfactorily corrected with glasses, contacts or surgery. They aren't necessarily profoundly deaf and totally blind; they may have "tunnel vision" and be hard of hearing. To communicate, they may use tactile sign language, fingerspelling or print-in-palm. They may also require either close or far proximity for clarity of visual field or they may need an interpreter to sign in a small space. For written communication, individuals who are deaf-blind may rely extensively on Braille, a system of raised dots to represent letters. Depending on the type of vision loss they have and if they communicate using sign language, these individuals may or may not have special requirements to accommodate their visual field and language needs.
Some individuals who are deaf may have had only limited exposure to formal language (spoken or signed) and consequently are not fluent in ASL or English. They may or may not have an effective gestural communication form that can be used to give or receive information. Therefore, providing communication access for individuals who have minimal linguistic competency will be most challenging. This process is most often facilitated by working with a certified hearing interpreter in conjunction with a Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI).
Interacting with People Who Have Speech or Language Disorders
Speech and language disorders are inabilities of individuals to understand and/or appropriately use the speech and language systems of society. Such disorders may range from simple sound repetitions and occasional misarticulations to the complete absence of the ability to use speech and language for communication. Speech and language problems can exist together or independently. Some causes of speech and language disorders include hearing loss, stroke, brain injury, mental retardation, drug abuse, cleft lip or palate and vocal abuse or misuse. Frequently, however, the cause is unknown.
Speech problems affect how the communication message sounds. There is a speech problem when so many speech sounds are distorted that the speaker cannot be understood, when there is no source of sound because the vocal cords have been surgically removed, or when stuttering disrupts the natural rhythm of the oral message. Speech disorders include fluency disorders, motor speech disorders and voice disorders:
A fluency disorder is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by atypical rate, rhythm and repetitions in sounds, syllables, words and phrases. This interruption may be accompanied by excessive tension, struggle behavior and secondary mannerisms. Stuttering is a type of fluency disorder.
A motor speech disorder is an impairment of speech arising from damage to the central or peripheral nervous system that can affect a person's speech, voice and breath support for communication and swallowing. Often, Parkinson's Disease, Hunington's Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) lead to motor speech disorders.
A voice disorder is characterized by the abnormal production and/or absence of vocal quality, pitch, loudness, resonance and/or duration, given an individual's age and/or sex. Vocal abuse and misuse are the most prevalent causes and preventable types of voice disorders.
Language disorders are the impaired comprehension and/or use of spoken, written and/or other symbol systems. Language refers to a code made up of a group of rules that cover what words mean, how to make new words, how to combine words and what word combinations are best in what situations. A person who cannot understand the language code has a receptive language problem. A person who is not using enough language rules to share thoughts, ideas, and feelings completely and appropriately has an expressive language problem. One type of problem can exist without the other, but often they occur together in children and adults.
When interacting with people who have speech or language disorders, consider the following tips:
Give the person your full attention. Don't interrupt or finish the person's sentences. Listen patiently and carefully.
Do not assume that a person with a speech impairment doesn't understand you.
If you have trouble understanding, ask the person to repeat the statement. If, after trying, you still cannot understand, ask the person to write it down or suggest another way of facilitating communication.
If necessary, repeat your understanding of the message in order to clarify or confirm what the person said.
Provide a quiet environment to make communication easier.
Interacting with People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired
Blindness is the total or partial inability to see because of a disease or disorder of the eye, optic nerve or brain. Legal blindness is defined as a visual acuity of 20/200 or worse with the best possible correction. Someone with a visual acuity of 20/200 can see at 20 feet what someone with normal sight can see at 200 feet.
Vision impairment means that a person's eyesight cannot be corrected to a "normal" level. It is a loss of vision that makes it hard or impossible to do daily tasks without specialized adaptations. Vision impairment may be caused by a loss of visual acuity where the eye does not see objects as clearly as usual. It may also be caused by a loss of visual field where the eye cannot see as wide an area as usual without moving the eyes or turning the head. Visual acuity alone cannot tell you how much a person's life will be affected by vision loss. It is important to also assess how well a person uses the vision he or she has. Two people may have the same visual acuity, but one may be able to use his or her vision better to do everyday tasks. Many people who are "blind" may have some usable vision that can help them move around in their environment and do things in their daily lives.
When interacting with people who are blind or visually impaired, consider the following tips:
Identify yourself and address the individual by name so the person will know you are speaking to him or her.
It is appropriate to ask, "Would you like me to guide you?" If your offer is accepted, let the person take your arm just above the elbow.
Offer to read written information.
Provide all standard printed information available to the public concerning court policies, practices and procedures in an alternate format such as Braille, audio tape, electronic format or large print. Efforts should also be made to provide information at kiosks or posted signage in an audible format.
If the individual has a guide dog, walk on the side opposite the dog. As you are walking, describe the setting, noting any obstacles such as stairs ("up" or "down") and objects protruding from the wall at head level.
Never pet a guide dog (or any other service animal) before getting permission from its handler to do so. The dog is working and must concentrate.
If you need to leave a person alone, inform the person first and make sure there is a rail, wall or something else he or she can touch.
A person's cane is part of the individual's personal space, so avoid touching it. If the person puts the cane down, don't move it. Let the person know if it is in the way.
© Georgia Commission on Access and Fairness in the Courts, December 2004
This website best viewed in Internet Explorer 5 or later.
