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‘Sometimes I have to sleep with the door to my hotel room left open!’ says deaf Clare
‘A prisoner in my own room,’ is how profoundly deaf Clare, 34, describes the sense of frightening isolation and danger she often experiences when staying in Britain's hotels. ‘Threats to my own safety that have included having to sleep with my bedroom door open!’
Clare, an assessor for Level One British Sign Language exams and TV presenter, who’s a regular traveller as a teacher on training courses, says : ‘No one with normal hearing can begin to imagine what it’s like to meet with rudeness and aggression from reception at hotels which have no provision for communicating with the deaf and hard of hearing, or safeguarding them as guests.’
Clare’s account of her daunting experiences as a deaf woman traveling alone is a timely reminder that deafness in the British population is increasing at a remarkable rate, with a 45 percent overall increase in the number of registered deaf people since 1989. What’s more, Clare makes the point that compared with the UK’s physically disabled community there are three times as many deaf or hard of hearing citizens, accounting for a massive 15 percent of the population, some 9 million people.
And deafness, Clare says, because it’s not so obviously visible as a disablement, can lead to an unfeeling lack of awareness of the problems she and other like her encounter in daily life.
Insulting V-sign!
Even at the simplest level of communication, she says, a deaf person can be misunderstood, often with grave consequences. She cites a deaf driver friend who, when pulled over in a routine police check, was arrested for using offensive and threatening conduct when simply indicating in conventional sign language (two-fingers to the ear) that he was registered deaf. The policemen, lamentably untrained in even the basic level of British Sign Language, had mistaken the deaf man’s gesture for an insulting V-sign!
This is the kind of incomprehension and rough treatment Clare encounters all too frequently in her travels to Britain’s hotels. ‘It’s a battle of wits,’ she says, ‘to obtain essential services in my hotel room – and, remember, I pay exactly the same rates as fellow hotel guests. When you think about it, the prejudice is crazy! For example, often I request a simple service like a TV with subtitles, not a lot to ask, surely? But, oh, the obstacles that are put in my way! In one hotel the manager was really rude. Wouldn’t help. He made no concessions to communicate. Wouldn’t even exchange written notes! ‘Finally, the only accommodation he could find with a subtitled TV was the grandest suite so, with very bad grace, he upgraded my room at a discounted rate.’
Bad attitude.
‘The sadness of it all is the fact that this episode isn’t untypical,’ Clare continues,
‘With few exceptions, from almost everyone who isn’t deaf we experience this bad attitude all the time. Once they know you’re deaf, hotel receptionists can become cold and unfriendly. ‘For a lone woman staying in a hotel, there are so many anxieties that whirl round and round in my head. I can’t relax. I’m absolutely alone without the support of someone I can trust. It’s exactly like being in a prison cell, in solitary confinement, especially if there is no provision for my needs such as a fire alarm system I can respond to, no subtitled TV, and no means of communication with hotel management in the event of an emergency.
‘To be honest, my fears are now so overwhelming that I would no longer stay in a hotel on my own. To be a female, a deaf female, in a hotel at night is a terrifying prospect because I sleep fitfully, never knowing who will enter my room unheard.’
Intruder in my room.
‘It’s frequently the case that, if I ask reception for a wake-up call (should I forget my own vibrating alarm clock), my paranoia increases even more when in the darkness of my room I’m woken by a tap on the shoulder from a strange man, maybe even a foreign cleaner, who’s entered with a pass key. The physical contact is truly awful. ‘Because I’m so very often a victim of crass and insensitive male intrusion, even after I’ve asked for a woman to wake me up, I can truly say I’ve never had a pleasant experience in a hotel. You know, the rapid switching on and off of the bedroom lights is quite sufficient to wake a deaf person without touching them.’
Male sexual opportunists
‘An unknown woman who’s deaf in a hotel alone? Sure, there are a lot of male sexual opportunists out there who my intuition tells me would regard a defenseless woman as fair game. That’s why I am so anxious to draw attention to the vulnerability of deaf people when they’re in accommodation far from home, and their need for both respect and proper services.
‘Even when services are provided, a special room equipped for the physically
disabled, invariably in an unattractive location, with a railed-off bath, for instance,
is really no substitute for a regular room fitted with simple means of communication for the deaf. For a person like me who’s sensorily impaired, being treated as if I were physically disabled can be degrading. ‘And, after all, the minimal requirements for a deaf hotel guest are relatively modest.’