[INTRO]
So, hello, as you may notice,
I am in a completely different area
and I actually have somebody with me today.
This is Molly, Molly Burke, she has her own YouTube channel.
She is a blind YouTuber and she makes videos similar to mine
except about, you know, her being blind,
and we had e-mailed each other a couple of months earlier,
and then we officially met at VidCon,
since we were both on the Disabilities on YouTube panel.
Two different ones, but here we are.
We just finished up another interview and, hello.
Hi.
So today we're gonna make two videos.
On my channel, we are going to be talking about how
deaf and blind people communicate.
If you know who Tommy Edison is,
he is also a blind YouTuber,
and I notice in the comments
he's always getting questions
that say, how do you communicate with deaf people?
Like, what is this thing, this can't possibly happen, right.
And so I thought while we were coming up with ideas,
I said, well, we could talk about this on my channel.
And then, what are we gonna talk about on your channel?
On my channel, we're gonna do kind of like
a deaf versus blind, so, obviously Rikki grew up deaf,
I grew up blind, so we're gonna talk about...
Sorry, what?
Did you, are you deaf?
(laughter)
Did you not catch that?
Communication issues already, apparently.
But yeah, so how growing up deaf
affected education and relationships
and then how growing up blind affected
education and relationships and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, so definitely, you know, go check out her channel
after you watch this video and, since Molly is my guest,
you can go on and tell them how I, as a mostly oral,
for the most part, you know, repeating myself here,
person would communicate with you,
and then, in general, like say
deaf people who were voice off.
Right.
Well, so, basically, you can probably tell
that Rikki and I are communicating just fine
and we have our whole friendship.
She talks to me, I talk back to her,
I just make sure that I'm speaking at a volume
that's good enough for her to be able to hear me.
And then she just speaks and obviously
I can hear her, but of course, then there's situations
where people would not be able to speak like Rikki,
and in that case, we would have somebody
like an interpreter kind of be our go-between,
so be able to communicate what I'm saying to Rikki,
and then what Rikki is saying to me,
we can do things like Rikki typing something out
on an iPad, and then I turn Voiceover on
and Voiceover can read it out to me.
So I feel like people often think that just, like,
we just can't be friends,
there's no way deaf and blind people can be friends.
We're enemies!
Yeah, we all hate each other,
I mean blind people are better, so, there's that,
but, I mean, that doesn't mean I don't accept you
as a friend in my life.
So there is ways that we can be friends,
that we can communicate.
Like, we're typically 700 miles away from each other,
so we'd be talking online for the most part.
Twitter and e-mail, so obviously that's fully accessible.
Oh wait, yep, blind people don't use the internet.
No, we can't use technology, we can't use, no.
You just sit in a hole all day.
It's true, yep, there is that.
You poor thing.
It's difficult.
It's a tough life.
Well, why don't you, you know probably more about like,
the touch ASL than I would.
Right, right, tactile ASL, that is for people
who are deaf-blind, like, say, Helen Keller.
And I actually have, my friend Abby who is deaf-blind.
She has some vision left, but for the most part
she uses a mixture of sign language
and she's been learning tactile ASL.
James Rath, who was part of the Disabilities on YouTube
panel as well, he's learning tactile,
so basically it's like, I don't,
I've never had real experience with it,
but I know it's like, if I were to have your hand right now,
like say, like if I was doing A, B, C.
And I heard there's like, kind of, you almost like.
I'm not really sure.
Yeah, I heard there's like, points on the hand,
and like, this means E, and this means O,
and so you like, kind of like, move around
with your fingers squeezing different parts of the hand.
We could look that up later.
I think that's really cool.
And then also, I mean, I know like, very basic ASL,
like hi, my name, so like, I could always communicate
with somebody, just because I can't see
doesn't mean I can't learn ASL and communicate
with somebody who's deaf, and again, you could just either
say it out loud to me, your answers.
So there's so many different options of ways to communicate.
And then, like I said, there's always somebody
who can be the in-between for us.
That reminds me of JD Dalton, who is also blind
and was also on the panel.
He was actually on the panel with me on the first day.
So many blind people on the panel, oh my God,
we were a little over-represented, I will say.
Yeah, I talked to Ally about it,
and hopefully, you know, next year.
It'll be a little more diverse with the disabilities.
And yeah, so JD Dalton, he has low vision,
I don't think he's 100% blind?
No, he has low vision.
So he and I actually used some ASL like during the panel
when Tommy was talking, and I'm like,
could you let me know when Tommy's done,
'cause the CART would be,
which is a live captioner, by the way,
it's like a five second delay, sort of thing, depending.
So I was just like, hey, you know, JD,
let me know when he's finished,
and he signed right back.
So, yeah, for me, obviously, you know me,
I grew up mainstream, so I'm mostly oral,
so she's talking to me, and we actually have a notebook
that's over there if somebody wants to pass that over.
So, like I said, you know, interpreter, so like, thank you.
So if she's talking to me out loud with her voice,
there are a couple of times when I'm like,
okay, what is she saying?
You probably won't see that in this video,
or in the interview that we did, too much,
because it's all edited, like, that's a thing,
you should know that by now, we edit things out.
We edit YouTube videos.
Everybody's always like, wait,
but she understood you perfectly, like, no.
You just don't see the moments when we stop
and I repeat what I said to her.
Exactly, so like, say, at VidCon, for example,
when we were at parties, like the Maker party,
it was very, very dark outside, a lot of people, very noisy.
And Tommy was talking to me so I would have Ben,
who was with him, he would be typing on the phone
or sometimes Tommy, he's pretty, he enunciates very well
and he talks very loudly, his voice is very powerful.
So if he's loud enough, he can probably yell into my ear.
Always ask permission to do that first, you know,
don't randomly go up to a deaf person.
You don't want me to do this?
Well, because I like you, you're fine,
but if you're a random stranger, you know,
you're probably gonna get punched in the face.
Maybe, I don't know.
Yeah, so, you know, interpreters, you know,
sign language, it's visual, or a CART, a live captioner,
you know, we'll pretend this is an iPad right now,
so like I have a CART, a live captioner with me, behind me,
in front of me, and you know, they type out everything
that's being said.
ASL interpreter, you know, they talk, sign,
and if I'm signing, you know, they talk to you.
Or, you know, iPad, whatever.
And during the interview we had stuff written down,
you know, simple, pen and paper.
What else?
I've actually had, like, I'm a motivational speaker,
that's my full-time job, and I've actually had
quite a few speeches where I've had a deaf audience member,
so I'll have somebody doing ASL standing beside me
onstage so that the person in the audience...
Which I think is so cool, like I'm telling my story
about being blind, and then the deaf person
is sitting there, hearing it, so it's so interesting.
And also, you know, if I were to type on the iPad,
then she would use, I guess Siri?
Voiceover.
Voiceover to read out to her.
She reads into the Voiceover and writes down on the thing
and then I can read it.
It's very, very simple, like, people think
that there's absolutely no way that we can communicate
with each other and just like, no, there's ways.
It's possible to be friends.
I know!
We're smart cookies, we can figure it out eventually.
You know, it's not that difficult.
Maybe at first it's kind of like,
oh shoot, like if we just met each other,
then we'd be like, trying to work it out.
But give us 10 minutes and we'll figure it out, you know?
We figured it out.
Yeah, so, I guess that's pretty much it.
I think we might've covered everything.
All the options.
Yeah, I mean, if we forgotten anything,
leave like information in the info box
or like make a still, you know, write it down,
but I think we're good.
Yeah, I think we covered it all.
If you know any other options,
comment down below and let us know.
Yeah, everybody's different
and we have different experiences,
and you know, whatnot.
So yeah, make sure that you check out Molly's channel.
Go to her video, it will be captioned,
so you know, for my viewers that are deaf,
you'll be able to have access to that video.
And that's pretty much it.
We will see you later.
Come join my family, bye!
[POKEMON OUTRO]