Tina Potter talks about the difficulty understanding people with masks on because she is unable to read their lips.
Annie Razberry talks about her daughter, who is part of the deaf community, and the problems she faces when masks are required.
Tina Potter, left, and Annie Razberry talk about the difficulty with understanding people with masks on because of the inablity to read their lips.
Tina Potter, left, and Annie Razberry talk about the difficulty with understanding people with masks on because of the inablity to read their lips.
Tina Potter, left, and Annie Razberry talk about the difficulty with understanding people with masks on because of the inablity to read their lips.
The state made mask-wearing mandatory inside of businesses in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, creating some frustrating and isolating consequences for deaf and hard of hearing individuals.
For Tina Potter, a deaf woman living in Mossyrock who relies heavily on reading lips to understand others, the mask mandate has put another roadblock in her way when it comes to communicating — taking away many of the freedoms she had when she could communicate with others more easily.
Potter, who is able to speak and uses lip-reading and sign language to understand others, said she has run into many problems in her day to day life now that the wearing of masks is required. She said that going to Walmart, or even getting food at the drive-through is much more difficult and people are rarely willing to remove their mask so she can understand them.
“I get so frustrated, I struggle a lot and I try not to lash out. I repeatedly ask if they could pull down their mask because I can’t understand what they’re saying. I know they’re talking because I can see the mask moving,” said Potter. “Before people started wearing masks I was more independent. Now I have to depend on someone to help me. It’s terrible.”
Potter said that people never write anything down to help her communicate, even when she asks, but hopes that cashiers at grocery stores and restaurants will start keeping a pen and paper nearby so that they can write things down or remove their masks for a short period of time in order to communicate.
Now that wearing masks has become the “new normal” and it is unknown how long they will be required, Potter is wondering what other areas of her life will be negatively impacted.
Potter recently received her associate’s degree in accounting from Centralia College and plans to return to get her bachelor’s but is concerned about the professor and other students wearing masks and making it so that she cannot read lips at school in the fall.
“When Tina goes to church and there’s a mask mandate, so the pastor is wearing a mask. She relies on lip-reading in that situation. How can she do that if the pastor is wearing a mask? The whole deaf community is struggling,” said Annie Razberry, Potter’s friend and a parent of a deaf child.
Potter is a part of a local deaf community that has started moving their meeting onto Zoom, but she finds that socializing and general communication over Zoom is much more difficult because deaf individuals rely more heavily on body language and other aspects of in-person communication in order to more fully understand each other.
Rachel Grayless is a deaf woman living in Tenino. She said that she has been treated poorly because she wasn’t wearing a mask.
“They don’t understand how isolating this is and such a demoralizing challenge to be cut off from communications. I’ve had people rudely demand that I allow others to do my shopping for me and just stay home and out of public because I obviously just want to spread sickness. It’s been awful with how rude people have been,” Grayless said.
Another deaf individual living in Lacey, Jamie Million, shared Grayless’ sentiment saying that she feels isolated and alone since the mask mandate and can’t communicate with people in public anymore.
When Razberry goes out in public with her 9-year-old daughter Kendra, she is unable to communicate with her when she is wearing a mask.
“When I go out in the community, out in public to the store, I cannot communicate with my kid when I have a mask on. When she and I are trying to communicate I have the choice of either taking the mask on and off or we just go maskless,” said Razberry.
Razberry said that she has spoken with employees of local stores and they have told her that they are scared to remove their masks for fear of getting fired or causing the business to get fined. She has found that a lot of the problem stems from employees not being educated on what to do when they encounter the deaf.
“I spoke with the store manager at Walmart and she said they have no problem removing their mask to communicate with the deaf but they haven’t educated their employees. Inslee’s guidance says employees can remove their masks when communicating with a deaf person but nobody knows all of the rules and regulations,” said Razberry. “The information keeps changing every time you turn around. Keeping people up to date on how to communicate when encountering the deaf is really, really difficult.”
Razberry said that she knows of 13 other people living in Mossyrock — children and adults — that are facing the same difficulties when try are out in public and trying to communicate with others. Potter and Razberry said that they are not concerned about catching COVID-19 as much as they are with being able to communicate with others.
