Well, for the first time in my 24 plus years in the job force, I'm unemployed.  As I've begun my job search, I've noted a marked difference from the last time I was actively seeking a job.  Employers seem more aware and more accepting of a candidate who is deaf or has a hearing loss.  More and more employers have TDD numbers, and so forth.  Make no mistake, I realize there is still a long way to go, BUT....

It has led me to not only think about the changes on the landscape for us in general since the passage of the ADA back in 1990, but also to think about the job search for many of the other deaf and hard of hearing members of the community.  I have to wonder if sometimes the deaf and hard of hearing limit themselves too much, searching only for jobs in specific fields, or in specific localities, etc?  The employment numbers don't lie.  Something like a staggering 25% or more of the deaf and hard of hearing communities are unemployed, many others are employed, but at lower wages that often do not equate to the poverty line, and often require holding more than one job just to pay the bills, or going on SSI or SSDI.

Education is a large reason, I have no doubt.  Many graduate from deaf schools and mainstream schools ill-prepared for the challenges of the working world, with poor written English skills, being behind their hearing peers in math and science, and so on.  75% of deaf students will drop out after their first year of college and never return.  Look around you, count 10 of your peers.  Almost 8 out of every 10 will not finish college if you are currently a student, and if you are already out (or a graduate), almost 8 of every 10 never finished.  That's astounding, and upsetting too.  More often than not, it is a failure of the education field to properly (TRULY properly) accommodate them with interpreters and so on.  There is also still the question of many who question WHY they need to write or communicate well with English.  I'm here to tell you now, as both a former hiring manager AND as a current prospective employee, proper communication skills in the written vernacular are essential.  I have seen MANY jobs listed as seeking candidates in my field (loss prevention, safety, security, investigations), and I have also seen MANY of these postings with grammatical errors, spelling errors, etc.  So poor English skills are NOT limited to the deaf or hard of hearing, don't get me wrong, but when I read blogs and comments as I peruse through the DeafRead postings and so forth, I cringe.  Call me a deaf audist if you want.  Say I look down my nose at others in the deaf community if you wish ( I do not), but the fact remains, good communication skills are essential.  Almost every position I have seen the requirements posted for have had a requirement posted that states something along these lines: "Must have excellent oral OR written communication skills".

I have to think back some, to my time in college, and wonder about the wisdom of on particular area of deaf education.  See, when I was in college, one of THE biggest alternatives to going into deaf education was going into the computer science field.  It was hailed as a job market that allowed the deaf and hard of hearing to be accomplished because many of the jobs focused primarily on computer skills.  Code writing, programming, etc.  I've since seen many people complain that even that field did not turn out to be the jobs bonanza it was thought to be.  Could the focus on this have taken away from the focus of developing GOOD skills in comunication, a basic staple of employment?  We will probably never know, since there is not a true quantifiable way to judge that.  But it is certainly a thought.  Many of our successful forebears were successful in large part NOT because they could communicate well orally (although many did and could), but because they were well-versed in the basics of education: Reading, writing, and arithmetic (math).  It goes to reason that many fail because they are left behind in the early childhood educational areas, whether it be due to poor/no accommodations, poor role models, or  poor planning, etc.  And the problems are excaberated when they reach college and it becomes "just too hard:" to keep up.

Anyway, just some random thoughts from my head as I cruise along the job search highway.  Thanks for reading along.

Eddie