Rogan Shannon

Hello and welcome to Vlogmas day 17. If you’re wondering what happened to day 16, I decided that would be a break day. I didn’t miss a video!

I wanted to give you a few tips for what to do during the holidays with deaf family. I did this video last year, almost exactly one year. I will repeat some things, but that’s fine, because sometimes it needs repeating. Really, number one, the big number one: make an effort to communicate. It doesn’t matter how. Writing, learning a little bit of sign, trying to make sure they can see you clearly, having one-on-one conversations. Really, just making an effort to communicate. We have several apps that can make this easier. I’ll tell you a few.

One is Big. I believe this one is iPhone only. It really just makes text big, white text on a black background. I think you can change it, but the default is white text on black. I use this all the time.

Another app that I’ve tried with varying levels of success: Ava. I tried this when I went to VidCon, with some of my hearing friends. It didn’t work that well. But. I tried it again, more recently, with some hearing friends. The big difference – at VidCon, we were outside, there was a lot of people around, a lot of noise, so Ava broke down and didn’t really work that well. But I tried again when it was just me and two other people. It seemed to work pretty well. And they downloaded it on their phones too, they tried it. We assigned the names, and connected the conversation, it seemed to work most of the time. That’s one option.

One app that’s fairly new is Google Live Transcribe. Right now, it’s Android only, iPhones don’t have it yet. One person I know has it, and we tried it out. It’s pretty good, and they speak Portuguese. They tested it with Portuguese, and it’s pretty good at understanding what they said. They tried some random, unusual words that aren’t really common in everyday speech, and it picked it up pretty well. So, if you have an Android phone, download that and try it. Let me know if that works really well for you. Really, you can even use the Notes app with speech-to-text for talking. The other way is a bit longer, but that’s another option too.

Also, there are a few apps out there for learning sign. I think one is actually called The ASL App. So download that, use a few websites. Lifeprint.com is always a good one. Just–Learn. Even basic signs. Don’t always text all the way. Especially if you have a deaf family member. That’s not fair to them, having to always take the burden of communication. Take some of that burden off of them.

One simple way to help them feel a little bit included is playing games. Board games, card games, or even doing a puzzle. Things that people can do together, but not require conversation. Puzzles can be useful for those who don’t mind being around people, but just don’t want to talk too much. My family does that sometimes.

That’s all for this year’s guide. I hope this helped you figure out a way to include your deaf family members. Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.

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