Please do not THROW or BANG things at me in order to get my attention. I am not a fucking dog. Learn some manners. Either kindly tap on my shoulder, wave, flick the lights, or send me a text if you’re really that fucking obnoxiously lazy & rude that you have to throw or bang things at me. What the fuck
More tips for POLITELY getting a deaf person’s attention:
- Don’t take “tap on my shoulder” too literally. It is generally better to GENTLY TOUCH a deaf person somewhere on their arm. Meaning, gently rest your hand on their arm for a second then release.
- If you literally “tap” rapidly multiple times, EVEN IF STILL GENTLY, it can convey a sense of huge urgency, on the level of “The entire room is on fire and we need to flee for our lives right now or else die horrible deaths.” If you do not mean to send the deaf person into a huge “life or death emergency happening right now!!!” panic, please don’t do this. A gentle TOUCH is all you need.
- Not all deaf people are the same. Some deaf people may dislike touch for the same range of reasons that some hearing people dislike touch. If you don’t know the deaf person well, it may be better to get their attention some other way the first time, and then you can ask if touch is okay for the next time.
- Waving, or placing your hand into a deaf person’s peripheral vision (as noted above) can work really well. Many deaf people are more attentive to our peripheral vision than hearing people. (No, we don’t see better, this is just about noticing if something is moving in our peripheral vision.)
- Let me amplify the suggestion for flicking the lights. I have had some hearing people tell me they won’t flick the lights because they “don’t want to scare me”. But if I turn around without realizing you were there and suddenly see you right behind me already in the middle of saying something, THAT is very disconcerting to me. Flicking the lights, on the other hand, will NOT scare me. In fact it does the OPPOSITE of scare me. It HELPS me. I WANT, yes genuinely WANT hearing people to flick the lights, so that I can know you are there! You have to realize that people may have been flicking lights for us OUR ENTIRE LIVES (if we were born deaf). It feels alien TO YOU to use light flicking as an attention-getting tool, but FOR US it may feel very natural and comfortable.
- Obviously, flicking the lights will catch the attention of everyone in the room: you might not be able to target it to just one person. This could be great if you are a teacher trying to get the attention of an entire classroom at once (works with sighted hearing students too! Try it!). And it may be perfectly fine if the deaf person is the only person in the room (e.g., private office). But obviously it’s not so helpful for deaf people sharing a room with other people you don’t want to disturb, like in a cubicle environment. In which case, try one of the other methods like waving.
- REGARDLESS of how you catch our attention, PLEASE wait a few seconds for us to look at you before you start talking. Please DO NOT START TALKING until you see our eyes on your face. Funnily enough, lipreading only works if we can SEE YOUR LIPS.
- Some hearing people may think this seems so obvious it shouldn’t need saying. If this is you, then congratulations, you have been endowed with common sense.
- But yes, some people do need reminding.
- If a deaf person is in physical contact with their desk, then they might pick up the vibration of a gentle tapping on their desk. Just bear in mind that, because this works via VIBRATION rather than sound, they really do need to be in physical contact with the desk for this to work. Otherwise, wave.
- If there is an ongoing issue with getting the deaf person’s attention, talk with them. They may have ideas or suggestions for how you can improve at getting their attention. Maybe ask if they would like to get a mirror that they can hang on the wall in front of them, or clip onto the top of their computer monitor. I use this at my office, and it lets me see if someone is behind me waving to me.