How Emory alienated me from my commencement ceremony

Accessibility is nothing new to universities. After the installation of the Americans with Disability Act in 1990 universities have been required to meet a certain standard of accessibility. The purpose of the law is to “make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.”

Full accessibility for a deaf person entails making sure they have total communication with their surroundings. The ADA protects the idea that deaf people deserve to have a right to their surroundings just like someone who is able-bodied. Of course, this can be very difficult to obtain depending on the situation, but that is why it is called “accommodation”, since it is a compromise. Standard practices include American Sign Language interpreters, Communication Access Real-time Translation, and deaf-friendly technology.

During my college career as a deaf individual Emory University was fairly good at meeting these standards academically speaking. They provided me with Communication Access Real-time Translation or ‘CART’, which is a manual real time closed captioning service that creates accurate subtitles of people’s speech, as well as provided me with note takers and any other necessary accommodations for my courses.

I like to be as optimistic as possible when it comes to my academic experience. I could be nit picky, but honestly they did the best they could at the time considering I was one of the first deaf students they ever had to deal with. Outside of academics there are still some necessary improvements and adjustments, but I think most universities have this problem. Overall I was provided with the minimum of what I needed in order to graduate. However, the line was crossed when I was not fully provided access to my graduation itself.

A photo with my fiancee

They first told me they would not provide me with CART during the baccalaureate since it would have caused a great inconvenience for them. Instead they said they would give me an interpreter. Bear in mind I unexpectedly went deaf during my college career. I am okay with American Sign Language, but I do not know any of my own religion’s signs, let alone any other religion’s signs. I accepted this offer after exchanging a few emails since it seemed unlikely they would give in and I figured it was better than nothing. In the end, I did not go to the ceremony after so much discouragement. Honestly, I regret not pushing it further.

Their website states the following about their commencement ceremony:

I was then denied an interpreter for the main ceremony, presumably because there were captions on the main screen. I figured this was would work out fine. However, I found out that the screen was actually rather small for its purpose and was placed to the side of the stage. This means I would not be able to view it from where I was supposed to sit in the graduating lineup. I expressed this to the ceremony organizers and after some pushing they finally agreed to put me closer to the screen. Things started to really look up. But again – I was wrong.

Although I was supposed to be in “preferential seating” (something they made up for my case), I was unable to read the captions for the majority of the ceremony due to poor screen angle and bystanders getting in the way. In fact, the captions were unreadable to a strong majority of the audience. Unless you were one of the professors, who had their own private screens, there was no way you could read the closed captioning. In addition, the captions sometimes would not even come up on the screen. I could have brought my laptop since the event was live streamed with the same captions, but then it would have a huge delay and I would end up not really being part of the moment. On top of that, I was sitting in the audience with the parents, which was a bit awkward since I stuck out like a sore thumb in my gown.

My typical view where captions are nowhere to be seen.

To be honest, I have no idea how they even thought I would be able to access the screen from where I was supposed to be sitting in the alphabetical lineup. I also have no idea what the purpose of captions were in the first place if no one in the audience could even read them. They state that they have services for those who are “hearing impaired” (which, by the way, is an offensive term to many who are Deaf), yet it was not fully accessible at all. Even just putting the subtitles on the top of the screen instead of the bottom would have made a huge difference. Honestly, it felt lazy and uncoordinated.

I think some of the solutions are so simple that anyone who has thought about it could have fixed this problem before it even happened (something I ended up trying to do by myself). This is a common story for the disabled; access would be so easy to provide, but someone has to actually take a moment to consider and initiate accessibility. Resources are not the problem, in fact in this instance they had the materials they needed, it is just they chose to not think about it, and thus did not efficiently approach accessibility.

Captions, again, nowhere to be seen.

It does not feel great to graduate from a university and not be able to gain proper access to your own graduation ceremony. I want to be in the moment, reading the names of my peers and the words of the speakers, which should fill me with happiness and pride. Instead I am awkwardly left to the side of my peers and can only judge what is going on based on the facial expressions of those around me. I felt completely alienated from my senior class. I had no idea Emory’s commencement ceremony was officially over until my fiancee came up and signed to me asking if I was ready to leave.

I constantly get questions on what it is like to be one of the only deaf students to ever attend Emory University, as well as any other top school in our country. This experience is just one of many examples of why you do not see many disabled students in a able-bodied dominant schools.

James Wagner, Emory University’s president, has responded with an apology stating that he: “Hopes improvements can be made for the future”.

In addition, several other people have reached out, with the Emory University Chief of Protocol and Executive Director of the Office of University Events reassuring me that my, “experience and feedback will indeed generate additional conversation and positive change about the process and fulfillment of disability services provided at Commencement.”

Universities, including Emory University, do their best to try and create full access to all their students, but there is a lot of improvement that still needs to take place before they are fully inclusive and accessible.

@momoxmia