Technology changes things

I can remember my full initiation into the Internet: I was studying a course in Theatre of the Deaf at Reading University, in 1992, having miserably failed to capitalise on a lower second IT degree from a middling polytechnic in the midst of an economic recession. The word "Thatcher" still has me struggling to hold back a reflexive desire to issue a saliva projectile from my mouth.

No matter, it was 1992 and the net was still a thing of wonder. I discovered email, Yahoo, text muds, Usenet and gobs of information about games programming which I absorbed and went on to use in finally carving out a niche for myself as a games programmer.

What excited me about the medium was it's communications potential. Previously profoundly deaf and unable to use the 'phone exculded me from society - it was difficult to keep in contact with old friends, and employment. "Being deaf is the worse of the lot - you can't use the 'phone". It occured to me that this medium was obviously going to be liberating for deaf people - at last instantaneous, cheap textual communication became the norm. And so it was: email, sms and im were highly useful for the deaf with a small 'd' who chose (or had chosen for them) English as their first langauage.

But then there are the Deaf with a capital 'D' - those who choose to sign and define themselves as a linguistic minority rather than a disabled group. Until now it doesn't really help them, as glossed sign reads a lot like pigdin English with a broken grammar, which of course instantly puts the average hearies prejudices into play.

This is finally changing, now that broadband and cheap video is common: these people are finding a voice - finding the liberation the rest of us experienced back then when the web was new, and wide eyed middle managment bullshitted on about the "power" of email. Never mind that, when you have YouTube. There's a lively range of discussion and exhibition going on out there..

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