Groups Slam Sign-Language Interpreters As Offensive To The Blind

“Sign language rubs in the faces of the visually impaired that they count less because no one has taken the time to make them feel included.”

Tel Aviv, September 17 – Advocates for the rights of the visually-impaired criticized today the use of visual measures to aid the hard-of-hearing in understanding audiovisual media and events, calling the phenomenon a manifestation of flagrant disregard for the feelings of those whose poor eyesight renders them incapable of benefiting from those measures.

Representatives of Visually Impaired Coalition for Treatment Improvement in Media (VICTIM), an umbrella organization, castigated television producers, concert organizers, and other purveyors of material with an audio component for engaging in blatant discrimination against the blind, and for not registering an iota of sensitivity toward those to whom closed captioning or sign-language interpretation only further highlights their disability and marginalizes them.

“There’s no better example of Sight Privilege than sign language,” declared Lifni Ivver of VICTIM. “On top of having to perform everyday tasks while visually impaired, which poses enough difficulty, the blind must also confront the fact that even other differently-abled groups have it easier than they do. Sign language interpretation does nothing to help the blind better understand or appreciate the content, and thus rubs in the faces of the visually impaired that fact that they count less because no one has taken the time to make them feel included.”

Ivver accused hearing-impaired organizations and their constituency of effectively exploiting the blind. “Deaf people and their advocates who fail to acknowledge their advantaged position relative to the visually impaired might as well be enslaving them,” he stated. “If intersectional politics has taught us anything, it’s that anyone lower than you on the advantage totem pole deserves your support, sacrifice, and genuflection. We’re not seeing that, so to speak, from the deaf community, and that must change. The sight-privileged better understand they owe the blind more. I don’t care how much they’ve given, they owe more because privilege.”

A spokesman for one of Israel’s largest advocacy organizations for the hearing impaired apologized for the phenomenon and promised measures to remedy the offense to the vision-impaired. “We’re terribly sorry,” said a contrite Asa Post of Shma Yisrael. “We must always remember that those less fortunate have a claim on all of our assets, attention, and time, and we are not allowed to question that entitlement, in perpetuity, lest we reveal ourselves as bigots. It would seem the only way to mitigate the privilege we deaf folks have is to convert to Islam, which will grant us automatic non-privileged status. Our board is considering such a move as well.”

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