by Karen Kraskow
He is a design researcher for a global IT company. He is charged with understanding the customers' needs and designing/planning the systems that make the businesses (of its clients) work. Customers never see the systems he designs, but they make (e.g.) the ticket gates process work without hitch. He is deaf. Christopher and I met through a program of the NYPL called Visible Lives: Oral Histories of the Disability Experience. I was an Interviewer and Christopher Taylor Edwards was a Storyteller. He told his story not only because it strengthens him, but because documentation of the lives of people with disabilities validates "our experiences both at the individual level and the civic-social level."
For design builds social relationships. As a design student at Parsons (graduated June 2015, at 41 years of age) he was part of a coalition that engaged homebuilders and remodelers in Detroit in uncovering and solving like problems, such as "How do you repair windows? How to get a permit for a dumpster? etc." These stakeholders, initially isolated in their efforts, were remodeling dilapidated properties, or building from the ground up on affordable, but depressed properties. In a partnership with the Knight Foundation and IDEO, Christopher and his colleagues - including businessmen and women, historic preservationists, journalists, peace corps veterans, graphic and industrial designers - invited the remodelers to gather in a storytelling event where they mapped and tested their ideas; they also developed skills classes, created a contractor directory and organized neighborhood tours, all in support of building a community to undergird the arduous work of homebuilding. Brick + Beam, a social impact organization who led the work, upheld the principle: when you are constructing a building you are constructing a community.
Christopher has applied his transdisciplinary (Transdisciplinary Design was his major) skills to the deaf community as well. He, himself, grew up hearing and only began losing his hearing when he was a sophomore in high school, something that continued to deteriorate, until complete loss in his 30's. His speech was not affected. He notes: today there are fewer deaf schools, deaf students are largely mainstreamed. Those individuals whose condition allows (Christopher's does not) use cochlear implants, which restore hearing almost completely. The result being that many more careers are open to individuals who deal with deafness. However, Christopher observes, career services offices at schools are not as yet prepared to assist these students in preparing for the workplace. To rectify this Christopher has published a toolkit to help deaf employees navigate the social space of their place of employment - from watercooler conversation to meetings. "Crafting Access: A Toolkit for Communications Access in the Office and in Your Career" (available from christopher@nonedesign.net) helps the reader prepare to explain what works best for them in their communication with the hearing environment. Through a series of tasks, users prepare to talk with an employer and also to engage in social conversation at the workplace. This effort also helped these individuals feel less isolated and gave all - who may have done this in the groups Christopher led at Parsons, an opportunity to explore how others handled similar situations. They became empowered to negotiate their own inclusion. And the hearing community learned from their efforts how best to work as a team together with them. This was yet another attempt to bring together for self-awareness and community awareness individuals dealing with the same issue.
He has some tips for interacting with a person who is deaf, but ultimately it's up to the person themselves to discover with the listener the best way to work with them. Some common themes are: don't repeat and enunciate what was not understood - rather, rephrase it. (Enunciating distorts the mouth as it makes the sound, making it difficult to speech read. ) Slow down, and always face the person you are speaking to. Some people who are deaf find it hard to know how loud they should speak and have to use cues from the environment (if there's a large crowd, people are probably speaking loudly; if people are in a library, probably not) one can help by giving gentle cues to help them modulate their voice to fit in with the sound surrounding.
To Christopher, communicating in a hearing environment is a 'design challenge.' Can you beat that attitude?
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