Yesterday’s Treasure…Today’s Trash?
In light of recent FCC rulings regarding video relay services across this great land called the United States of America and what the Federal government is willing pay, per minute, for this equal access to tele-communications for the deaf; I find it interesting and sad to see individuals once viewed as a treasure – meaning skilled video relay interpreters – being cast out on a moments notice like a bag of garbage on trash day. What has brought about this “shock and awe”? Please read this article:
Interpreters for the Deaf Out of Jobs
As a former video relay interpreter and current colleague to many who are still working at video relay sites, this is upsetting. Concord, NH may seem like world’s away from our amazing city called Knoxville, TN but in the tech-age of 2010, worlds away is really only moments away via a few key strokes. What happened in Concord, can happen anywhere there is a VRS center.
The article states that the center’s interpreters were called in and were quickly “let go” and given a box to pack their belongings in. No pink slip. No notice. Just 20 minutes and a Goodbye. The center is officially closed. As I read this I found myself going back in time to the Dot Com era and the frenzy we all know as eBay, which has survived, and sites such as Egghead.com which burst like balloon dropped from a 60 story building. Talk about a moment of disbelief.
Was this inevitable? Too big…to fast? Or a product of an economy fighting desperately to go uphill against a strong headwind? After-all, VRS services are not cheap. Convenient? Absolutely. But not cheap.
Who suffers in all of this? Truthfully? The deaf community does. The interpreters do. And the taxpayer does as well. Fewer centers equates to fewer interpreters available which leaves deaf people waiting, on hold, for longer periods of time. Each minute in VRS land, costs money whether someone is talking or waiting on hold.
Since the VRS teeter totter has slammed the ground on both ends, may balance now come to the profession of interpreting. Isn’t that the goal in every profession? in every business? in every new, inventive idea that comes out?
As a community interpreter and owner of Visual Communication Interpreting, I have no desire to ever go back to a flat screen interaction because for me, there is great satisfaction in working with and interpreting for a treasure, the people collectively known as our local deaf community. That face to face, hug a neck, shake a hand connection that is missing in the tech-age of virtual interaction is prevalent in the community setting. There is nothing like a smile and a cheerful hello when you walk into a work site.
At the same time, it is my hope that the communities (both hearing and deaf) remember that it is because someone is willing to sit in a grey cubicle for up to eight hours a day and process calls one after another after another, that VRS calls for pizza, doctor appointments, tech support, calls home and to school, for work, for benefits, and truthfully for anything and everything under the sun. In the same breath access to a live interpretation is available whether it be from a doctor to his/her patient, from a Mom to her son, from a boss to their employee, from a boyfriend to his girlfriend.
VRS interpreters are not today’s trash because to the deaf community and to many in the hearing community…they are still considered quite a Treasure.