Deaf Face Discrimination

The treatment of disabled Americans has greatly improved following the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and the Individuals with Disabilities Act in 2004. However, discrimination against these individuals such as the deaf and hard of hearing still exist. From the non-accommodating school settings to the denial of a translator, the deaf and hard of hearing face discrimination that negates the basic rights of humans. Despite the enactment of these laws, the deaf and hard of hearing (HOH) community still face daily discrimination in educational, employment, and commercial settings.
Discrimination against deaf students begins from as early as elementary school and follows them to college. With nearly 700,000 deaf and hearing
In July of 2003, the United Parcel Service (UPS) agreed to provide deaf workers with interpreters for interviews, orientations, training, safety meetings, and disciplinary sessions after being brought to a discrimination lawsuit by more than 1,000 current and former deaf employees. At the trial, Babaranti Oloyede, a deaf employee, testified that UPS failed to provide him with an interpreter during a safety training session for detecting packages that could possibly carry anthrax. He said that over the 10 years he had worked there, the company never provided a qualified interpreter for any other training. Along with providing interpreters, UPS also agreed that company officials would meet at least three times a year with each deaf employee to address their work concerns and provide each deaf worker with a vibrating pager for emergency situations. However, UPS was brought back to court in October 2006 for illegally discriminating against hundreds of deaf employees by restricting them from driving delivery vans. The Court of Appeals ruled that the parcel delivery company's policy of denying driving jobs to hearing-impaired employees violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and was thus forced to allow deaf Americans to drive delivery trucks for UPS. However, this delivery company is not the only corporation to
A Starbucks coffee shop on Astor Place in New York City acted rudely towards a group of deaf people and hearing people learning sign language. One deaf woman in the group named Miu Ng wrote her coffee order on a piece of paper and handed it to the barista who bluntly waved her away. Veronica Bitkower, another deaf woman, used her voice to order and was met with a cold stare. Although she was served, she received her coffee stale and bitter. Other members of the group reported that workers refused to take their orders, stared when they signed to each other, and complained that they weren’t buying enough. Eventually this lead to the coffee shop banning them from coming back. Similar incidents have occurred at two separate Taco Bells in New Jersey of 2016. A deaf female customer stated that she was discriminated and “treated rudely” after writing down her order and passing them to the employees in the drive-thru. On the first occasion, she claims that the manager berated her before handing her her order. Two months later, she went through another drive-thru and was refused all service without any communication from the staff. As of recently, Taco Bell has not yet received a lawsuit. These deaf customers were no different from the hearing customers yet they denied service; they were simply denied for their form of communication, how is this