Deaf Pagan Crossroads

Anyone who has been following me here at the Crossroads for awhile knows that I am a big advocate for Equal Communication Access. Having access to information is vital to all of us…and deaf & hard of hearing people are no exception to this need. Whether it be interpreting services, or CART services…

or captioning of on-line videos.

I’ve already blogged about this before. As we see an increasing use of the internet for news, education, and entertainment, it becomes necessary to once again advocate for accessibility. I can remember doing this back in the eighties with broadcast television…now it seems the issue of captioning (or rather the lack of it) is rearing its ugly head again as those in the Deaf Community find themselves left in the lurch.

But don’t take my word for it…watch what Adam has to say:

Maybe you are thinking to yourself…”why should I care? I’m not deaf or hard of hearing, and I don’t use captions.”

Maybe you don’t now…but you might need them in the future. As our baby boomers are aging, hearing loss becomes more and more common. It might not be long before some of you start realizing that you’re having a harder time understanding television, or those videos on the web. The day may come when you will be thankful for those captions. And even if you don’t need them, perhaps someone you know does. In fact, if you’re a frequent visitor to the Crossroads, you already do know that someone…me.

And if you are a Pagan, think about this:

For many of us in the Pagan Community, a big part of our Path is using our magickal tools to create positive change. As Starhawk wrote in her book Dreaming the Dark,

If you believe in and follow the Pagan Path, your spirituality will demand that you act, and work to bring about change. And change is never an easy thing to deal with.

As a Deaf Pagan, both my spirituality as a Pagan and my identity as a Deaf person demand that I act too, and work to bring about change within the Deaf Community. Much of that change is about balancing power, and equalizing it. And a big part of equalizing that power is assuring that all people have equal access to information.

Here we see another video where two Deaf women talk about that very need to bring about change, balance power, and create equal access:

This is why I am giving my support to the #captionTHIS movement, and I hope that you will also!

So why not join in? On Wednesday, June 6th join me and many others as we advocate for Equal Communication Access and urge everyone to support on-line captioning. Get involved! Tweet about #captionTHIS on Twitter. Post the videos above on your Facebook Wall. Send the link for this blog post to all of your friends. Put up a post on your own blog! Send emails to such news websites as CNN, AOL, USA Today, etc.

For more info on how to get involved, check out this link…which includes contact info for sites that you can send your emails to:

http://blog.deafpolitics.org/2012/05/captionthis-social-media-movement.html

I also encourage you to head over to the blog of my Spirit Sistah Crystal Dolphin, who has herself written an excellent post about the need for on-line captioning and her own support of the #captionTHIS movement:

http://crystaldolphin.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/take-action-for-captionthis/

And don’t think that only deaf and hard of hearing people need to get involved…we need our hearing allies too. We need YOU!

So won’t you join me in creating positive change? Together, let’s send a message out into the universe to #captionTHIS!