DEAF AWARENESS IN LOS ANGELES, AMERICA - Dean's personal account

Universal Studios

DEAF AWARENESS IN LOS ANGELES, AMERICA.

Los Angeles in America, the people are fantastic. I went on holiday for two weeks with my girlfriend who is also Deaf. Hire car is a must in LA.

Great deaf awareness and I was very impressed with their services which they just do it simply with a smile. Not even once they look annoyed with Deaf like some people in the UK. They were very happy to write down on a paper when we requested them due to lip reading can be hard at times because of the accent and different words of meaning. They quickly got pen and paper ready within 2 secs and whereas UK would struggled to find pen and paper!

They always smile and write down and have little conversation with us. Most of them are able to do a basic simple sign language using hand gestures or try to copy our

Disneyland

BSL , they are willing try sign thank you all the time. We always felt self worth as they made an effort, respect us and treat us like any other customers.

We have visited many places like Hollywood, Universal Studios, Disneyland Sea world and Beverly Hill tour.

Universal studios have a system that provide to accommodate for people who need additional support. We turned up on the wrong day for interpreters which is provided twice a week. We paid full at the gate and then went into customer relations to recieve reduce prices due no interpreters and upgraded our tickets to " priority track" which means fast track queue on all rides.

 Sea World also provide interpreters couple days a week but again we went on the wrong day ,we were happy as they gave us half prices tickets. We went everywhere at seaworld and saw killer whales, dolphins, sea lions and so on.

We have visited many big restaurants and they have many TVs in resturants which is mostly sport channels. You have the option to choose which sport u want to watch, for example American football, Baseball and Basketball.

When we tell the waitress that we are Deaf, waitress just smiled and said follow me with a hand gesture to a well lit lights area table and I looked around the room and couldn't believe how many or how big the tv was.

Within few minutes they put on the subtitles on. It's good thing that we didn't even have to ask to put subtitles on which they do it automatically. The subtitles was on every TVs in the resturants and I told my girlfriend that wish it was the same in UK, If it was in UK it would be stressful to ask them to put subtitles on or doesn't have any clue how to put it on!


American people are very helpful as me and my girlfriend were signing to each other at the metro ticket machine trying to work out and to pay for metro ride to the LA city to see the sightings of Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

A lovely lady came to see if we needed help with the machine and we told the lady that we are Deaf. She saw us signing and it didn't scare her at all. We thanked her for her help in sign language and she gave us a thumb up. ;)

We visited at Hollywood and saw many tour buses stands providing tours to Beverly Hills. We went for a well known company and they just refused to get discount price for unable to hear the talking during the tour. So we looked other tour stands and saw a smaller company, we explained that we are Deaf and can't hear the speaker, they agreed to reduce the price to a child price which it about 30% off the adults price and we enjoyed the Beverly Hills tour even we didn't know which famous people houses.

I must admit we got warning from the police on the 2nd day during driving a hire car trying to understand america's road rules near our hotel. I was doing the directions from the sat nav for my girlfriend who was driving. There was a confusion with the sat nav, I wasn't sure if it was allowed do u-turn. We took u-turn and suddenly saw policeman on a motorbike wearing a cool sunglasses with sound sirens and flashing lights! The policeman who stopped us and was able to use basic sign language and understood that we were confused with american driving rules and come from UK. The kind policeman let us off with a warning. My girlfriend told me off for trying to make u-turn mistake. Opppps!


At shopping malls, the shop workers were friendly and helpful as well even the kids were willing to sign hello or thank you to us. We visited a tea shop and the shop lady came to us and signed in ASL (american sign language) talking about different types of teas. My girlfriend bought a tea and chatted with the lady and discovered that she has just started her 1st day and was on her 1st hour in the shop! She was beaming and pleased that we were her 1st customer who bought tea and was able to communicate with us in ASL.

Overall, we had a fantastic experience and enjoyed our holiday in LA.

D.Wash


View of LA evening lights

 Thanks Dean for sharing.