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The case study
I still recall the illustration one deaf teacher used when he was explaining to us about the condition of the deaf in the society. He put each one of us in an imaginary situation. He said, just imagine that you find yourself locked up in a glass house in a fatal situation where you hear no one and no one hears you. How are you going to call out for help when no one hears you scream? The only means to call for help is to use signs to communicate the situation to the people who see you. He concluded that each of us at a certain point in life will need to use a sign to communicate and therefore it’s very important to understand deaf culture and their social importance in the society.
My friend Harrison, who happens to be deaf from age six (now thirty-two years) and have had all of his successful deaf education and now working as a teacher, always complains to me why the Ghana government don’t allow deaf people to drive auto-vehicles. By then, I had not really taken much concern about the Ghana legal terms relating to deaf people and driving in this country. I was well informed about the affairs of other countries that permitted deaf people to own a driver’s license.
In relation to the acquisition of driver’s license by deaf people in Ghana, I came across one article written by a Ghanaian deaf who have expressed discrimination towards deaf people in acquiring driver’s license. Mr. Dei-Kusi, as he signed as the author, went to the Ghana Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to secure a driver’s license. After passing the written test, the officer in charge asked him to provide a medical report on his level of hearing ability before they can proceed to the processing of the driving license. He was told that his hearing examination may be required to submit medical report so that it would let the DVLA office see if he can hear the levels of sound with aid of hearing aids before his request would be granted. The reason given according to the author was that deaf drivers could be a source of danger to other road users.
Mr. Dei-Kusi continued his story by doing the necessary thing expected of him. He went to see an audiologist for his hearing examination. The text took him one week and he was obliged to buy hearing aids to facilitate his acquisition of the driver’s license. Upon presenting all the required documents, Mr. Dei-Kumi had to undergo series of interrogations which appeared an intentional reluctance on the part of the DVLA to grant him his license.
As at 2006, deaf people were not allowed to own a driver’s license in Ghana. The 2006 Persons with Disability Act 715 gave right to persons with disability to own a driver’s license including hearing impaired persons. Section 27 of the Act states that:
“A person with hearing disability may own a driving license upon passing a driving test and satisfying conditions prescribed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority.”
In many countries, deaf people have access to the acquisition of driver’s license to drive their own vehicles while others do not. Some countries where they are permitted, there seems to exist bureaucratic discrimination based on several arguments relating to their hearing impairment. Mr. Dei-Kusi and Harrison might have been victims of attitudinal and architectural stereotyping towards deaf people in the access to their rights. Does disability mean disable?
Disability, disable or unable?
“Hey you, what are you deaf, huh?” a man honked at C. Jones, Actor and director of Through Deaf Eyes. Of course he is deaf but was not very happy to be addressed in that way. The shout may imply that deaf people must not be on the road. What are some of the attitudinal and society models that have stereotyped deaf people?
Everything is about the society. It is the society that defines what is acceptable and what is not, who is able and who is disabled. As Lisa Egan, author of I’m not a “person with a disability”: I’m disabled person, said “… I am disabled by a society that places social, attitudinal and architectural barriers in my way.” Egan expands this notion into two ways of looking at disability based on two sociological theories: the medical model and the social model of disability. The medical model views the person with the disability as the problem. If a cripple fails to jump over a gutter, the medical modes does not see the gutter as the problem. The problem is with the cripple. The person’s physical disability or incapacity to utilize societal architects is his own “problem” because of his or her infirmity. The social model theory on the other hand looks at the complexities that have been created for the impaired. It blames the society for discriminating persons with impairment from having access to public designs. In the case of Egan, her inaccessibility to escalators and staircases is because the society has created these barriers to interfere her mobility. She therefore defines herself disabled because society has disabled her. It is within the confines of these complex social models that she is classified as disabled or having disability.
T. Shakespeare, author of Debating Disability, objects to this allegation by the social model. He says “it fails to capture the complexity of disabled people’s lives.” He continued by saying that disability is not oppression and cannot be even defined as such. Even though some persons with disability undergo oppression, Shakespeare argues that not all of them experience oppression yet both remain disabled. His argument does not fail to clearly vindicate society by making reference to disadvantage factors other than oppressive factors that disable persons. Even though Egna’s conclusion may seem close to that of Shakespeare, he [Shakespeare] will deny Egna’s approach as having palpable wrong notions. That is to say that Shakespeare believes that aside societal factors that cause disadvantage to disabled persons, “…disabled people also face other difficulties arising from the predicament of having impaired bodies or minds.”
To this end, it becomes clear that there is a need for a dialogue between individual factors and contextual factors. Pointing fingers at the society can reciprocate defensive mechanism. What must be a dialogue is always turned into exchange of blame and justification. Shakespeare rightfully put it that disability “is always an interaction between individual factors – predominantly impairment, aspirations and motivations and contextual factors – environments, policies, barriers and so forth.”
Coming back to the illustration in the introduction, there is always a barrier that impedes successful dialogue. If there were no impermeable glass walls, a simple cry for help will attract people’s attention. An attempt to synchronize both Egna and Shakespeare’s conception about disability must be well merged in such a way that no injury would be caused to see impairment as disability or society as oppressor. The concept must be interpreted in this glass wall. It can be a barrier as a result of being disabled and it can also be a barrier constructed by societal architects to disable the disabled.
What is the case with deaf drivers?
It must be noted that social stratification can cut off many from society. This has nothing to do with having physical disability or not. A child who is refused to further her studies because the parents can’t afford the school fees is in one sense disabled to have formal education due to lacking a formal education the world in which she lives in values. Nevertheless, social stratification does not mean denial of access to what everyone has the right to entitle. Persons with disability may be classified as one social group but that does not deny them from their social privileges and integration. An attempt to deny a deaf person a driver’s license is an attempt to rob him of his societal and national privileges.
If we take both the medical and social models of disability in the case of Mr. Dei-Kusi, it can be seen that he has experienced discrimination in the sense that the society sees deaf people as potential causal agents of accidents on the roads. This fallacy is deep rooted in the perception that he’s medical proven as deaf. But does deafness has to do with road accidents at all?
Dealing with fallacies about deaf driving
First the conception that deaf people can be a threat to other road users is fallacious. This is fallacious in the sense that every driver can be a threat to other road users when basic road precautions are down played. The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and Swedish National Association of the Deaf (SDR) 2009 global update on the human rights of the deaf people as compiled by Hilde Haualand (Researcher) Colin Allen (Assistant Researcher) affirmed that “There are no known reports that Deaf drivers are a threat to other road users in the countries where Deaf people are allowed to obtain a driver’s license, or that they are involved in more traffic accidents or injuries than the general population. Denying Deaf people a driver’s license is limiting their employment opportunities; as well it limits their freedom of movement and access to various social arenas and life in general.”
Second, it is wrong to concentrate on a person’s disability. This can be a weapon against the person’s social integration and also an attitude of suppression and oppression on the part of the agency in charge. The concentration must rather be on his road precautionary attitude. It is quiet ridiculous to think that deafness can be a threat to road users whiles we got many ankles jerking from hearing drivers each day. From the blog Fookem and Bug and in the article Many people think Deaf people should not drive the author stated that “… driving is an almost completely visual activity for anyone. How many drivers watch the road with their ears?” True as the statement, driving is almost a question of visual concentration.
Third, it is very obvious that many hearing people are already deaf on the road; busy ears talking on phone, chatting with the next passenger, loud music, rolled windscreens etc. In John Hughes' 1987 comedy classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Neal Page and Del Griffith lost their way and were driving towards the opposite direction of the cars in the night. A driver from the other side of the road honked and yelled at them “You’re going the wrong way”. All the persistent alarm failed when Neal and Griffith failed to understand what was communicated. Finally, they were engaged in a fatal accident. If hearing impairment is a threat to driving, then it’s not a question about who is deaf, it’s about who can’t hear from the outside.
Fourthly, researchers have come to the conclusion that deaf people drive safely than people with normal hearing. The World Weekly News at Lantana, Florida reported on April 25, 1995 that deaf people world’s best drivers. Among some of the reasons given included their adept concentration on watching the road and frequently looking at their rear view mirrors because of their disability. The research reviewed that their inability to hear sounds of ambulances and sirens is not a problem at all since they can easily pull aside or over when they see it from behind.
Conclusion
“Disability is a complex, scalar, multidimensional phenomenon” says T. Shakespeare. It becomes more complex when there is a lack of interaction between the disabled and the society. Societal institutions must therefore engage in serious dialogue with disables to understand their culture in order to make life easy and comfortable for them. The society must be friendly enough for a convenient integration of the physically challenged. The battle left for physically challenged to fight is discrimination, stigmatization, stereotyping and all the other societal wrong perception against them.
To own a drivers’ license must not be a question of disability. As Mr. Dei-Kusi said in his article “When deaf people drive, they enjoy a basic privilege they deserve just like anyone else. It also demonstrates that deafness does not have to hinder the quality of life.” He continued to conclude that “The disqualification for driver’s license does not rest with the deaf people themselves, but with the environmental and attitudinal barriers of the society and those that govern the system.”
Society’s problem is discrimination and discrimination is the only disability that exist and that is the society. Disability discrimination must be seen as illegal. Society must be ready to embrace each member of the society by providing equal rights and opportunities to each person. Disability is not inability. It is only a challenge that persons with disability must overcome in their own way. If society creates more barriers by discriminating them, their disability will end up disabling their abilities. The best way to reduce disability discrimination is to have a circumspective and logical dialogue between persons with disability and the society that victimizes them.
References
- Dei-Kusi Johnson, Deaf Persons Having Rights to Drive in Ghana. Ghana Web, October 11, 2011. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePag....php?ID=221321. Date accessed April 27, 2014.
- Barb Wifi, Keep On Truckin' For The Deaf! June 12, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKUbkWPWewM. YouTube Video.
- Lisa Egan, I’m not a “person with a disability”: I’m disabled person. Nov 9, 2012. (Blog) http://www.xojane.com/issues/i-am-no...isabled-person. XO JANE.
- T. Shakespeare, Debating Disability. Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan. 2008), pp. 11-14.
- Through Deaf Eyes, Weta and Florentine Films. Hott Productions, Inc. January 10, 2007. www.pbs.org/weta/throughdeafeyes.