Accessible Beginnings: Deaf-run Ava’s Mission for Total Inclusion
Because no one wants to be left out of any conversation.
Imagine sitting at a dinner table with your friends and family. Everyone’s eating and having a great time, jokes are made, and laughs are shared.
Now imagine that they’re all speaking in a language that’s inaccessible to you. You try to use context clues to keep up with the conversation. Still, it’s hard to know who is saying what when everyone is speaking a million miles a minute, leaving you feeling flustered, so you stop trying to engage and instead sit back.
Later your friend notices that you missed a joke and then leans over to say, “I’ll tell you later,” a genuine expression; however, you’re still left feeling excluded in the moment and perhaps for the rest of the evening. This is an instance of an exceptionally inaccessible situation where hearing people at the table unintentionally exclude Deaf or hard-of-hearing folks.
Dinner Table Syndrome
Circumstances like this are what’s referred to as Dinner Table Syndrome, a common experience for Deaf and hard-of-hearing folks. Although it’s not always pertinent to a dining situation, the sentiment behind the phrase encompasses Deaf and hard-of-hearing folks’ lack of access to communication.
Deaf blogger Ahmed Khalifa describes these experiences as trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle but, “you don’t have all the pieces,” leaving you feeling isolated, lonely, exhausted, and frustrated.
For some Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, a fully signing environment is an ideal solution to Dinner Table Syndrome. However, even when folks are willing to learn sign language in an impromptu situation, it’s virtually impossible to retain the pace of a natural conversation with a new sign language learner.
Additionally, it’s important to remember that not all Deaf and hard-of-hearing people are raised in a signing environment or have access to sign language, so having a reliable and ready-to-go solution is often necessary.
Ava was created with Dinner Table Syndrome in mind. With both the mobile and desktop applications, Ava continually works to address these inaccessibility scenarios, whether professional or social, remote or in-person.
For more information about Ava’s accessibility solutions, click here.
Ava’s Beginnings
Two of our co-founders, Thibault Duchemin and Skinner Cheng, both experienced Dinner Table Syndrome first-hand, but from different perspectives.
Thibault is a CODA (child of Deaf adults) who grew up as the only hearing person in his immediate family. As many CODAs do, he spent his childhood interpreting for his parents and sister. He witnessed his family members struggle to communicate and felt deep empathy for them, making him passionate about leveraging technology to their advantage.
On the other hand, Skinner was born hearing but became Deaf at the age of two. He grew up in Taiwan, where he was the only Deaf person in his family, who often stepped up to help him communicate.
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