A Deaf Mom Shares Her World

Are You Enjoying Your Summer?

Posted on July 24th, 2008 by DeafMom

It was like old times. We invited two families to join us at Christie Lake over the weekend. Dennis, Laura, Steve and Joanne. Plus their kids. It was the first time we all kicked back together up at the lake. The weather forecast called for rain the entire weekend but none of us cared. We just wanted to connect with one another and catch up on life.

Visiting St. Julian's Winery

It definitely rained. We decided to go to the St. Julian Winery in the morning. We left Dennis behind with the kids, and they took off in the rain to go swimming. I hadn’t been to the winery since I was a kid, sipping grape juice at the bar. It was fun to sample the wine and try unusual ones. We ended up buying a blackberry wine and the Niagara.

After the sampling, we took a tour of the winery. The tour guide slowed down his speech and faced us while he spoke, so the tour was pretty accessible for us. Unfortunately, the short movie in the beginning wasn’t captioned.

When we arrived back, the rain slowed down. We grabbed lunch and then decided to go tubing with just the adults first. The kids were taking a break from all the swimming they did.

As I whipped Dennis and Steve around, I tried to make sure that Steve didn’t fall off too hard or crash his head into Dennis. I didn’t want to jar his cochlear implant internally and be responsible for sending him back into the hospital for a re-implant. When Steve climbed into the boat, he thanked me for the wild ride. “That was me being cautious!” I laughed.

Steve brought up his kayaks so we all took turns kayaking around the lake. On Sunday, the sun came out in the afternoon so we took the pontoon out and swam in the middle. We took the kids tubing and kneeboarding the rest of the time.

This was a rare weekend for all of us together but I was really thankful for it. There’s nothing like spending some time with friends and family, sharing good food and good times.

So how’s your summer going? Are you finding enjoyable moments to kick back and enjoy? Share them in the comment section!

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Deaf Mom World Gets a New Look–Makes Alltop

Posted on July 22nd, 2008 by DeafMom

How do you like my new look?

No, I didn’t get another dye job.

Gaze your eyes upward and you’ll find my new banner design. I won the banner design from Meryl Evans, who was giving away five grand in prizes to celebrate her blog’s eighth birthday. I can’t wait to see what she gives away at her tenth birthday!

The banner was designed by Harry, the talented designer from Men with Pens. When I first received notification that I won a banner design, I was thanking the stars for aligning in my favor. One of the things I wanted to do after the SOBCono8 was to customize my theme, but being the ultimate procrastinator, I kept putting off the search for a designer. Lo and behold, I now had one at my beck and call.

It sure was fun working with Harry. Harry, do this. Harry, can you try that? Harry, can you make it darker? Harry, can you airbrush 40 pounds off and make me look like Christie Brinkley?

We had a little problem with geography and I ended up first in Canada, then in Michigan. Harry was working off the logo I created all by myself, from scratch at the left. Considering I spend half of my summers at Christie Lake in Michigan, I thought about leaving it there. But it was too much fun to order Harry to make more changes. So Harry’s slaving away and moving me to Chicago soon.

Harry also went above and beyond duty as he helped me install the banner on my blog. We worked through instant messaging and I asked him to walk me through the whole process. He could have easily installed it himself, but he was willing to take the time and guide me by the hand. Navigating the code was like walking through a minefield, and Harry kept me from blowing my blog up.

Would I pay money to have this done by Men with Pens? You betcha.

In other news, A Deaf Mom Shares Her World made it to the very top of Alltop in the Disability section. I’ve been quoted in Car and Caboodle and Diversity, Inc. recently. And the most exciting news of all: I’ve been asked to become a regular blogger for Momlogic and Chicago Moms Blog.

But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run. I wish I was jetting off to an exciting blog conference or hosting a book signing, but there’s something more urgent to take care of.

The toilet’s clogged up.

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Steak ‘n Shake — Filing a Complaint for Discrimination

Posted on July 17th, 2008 by DeafMom

It was bound to happen.

For the last two days, friends have been sending me the news articles about Karen Tumeh, a deaf woman from Nebraska who is suing the McDonald’s corporation for refusing to provide access in the drive thru.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Back in January, my son and I had the drive thru window closed in our face, not once, but twice by a head trainer/manager of Steak ‘n Shake in Bolingbrook. “Go around and use the speaker,” I was told. Numerous attempts to explain that I was deaf did not sway him. Showing my hearing aids didn’t convince him to serve me. He stated that he could call the cops if I continued to remain in the drive thru.

Many people told me to “sue the pants off of Steak ‘n Shake!”

I wanted something more. I wanted to work with the corporation to try and affect some positive changes. I didn’t want to pursue a lawsuit. I wanted to make it so that when my kids go through a Steak ‘n Shake drive-thru, they’d be able to access it in any of their 400+ restaurants.

A meeting was set up with three Steak ‘n Shake employees: the Director of Communications, Director of Human Resources and Director of Operations. Howard Rosenblum, a deaf attorney from Equip for Equality and a person who was very familiar with the drive thru issues, joined us at the meeting. He was there to represent me and make sure that all of the bases were covered in protecting my rights.

At first, the possibility of change seemed quite possible. The three corporate staff persons were interested in making positive changes so that this would not happen to another deaf, hard of hearing or speech-challenged person in their drive-thrus. They indicated that they were not the right department to implement the changes and that we would have to meet with other staff who could put changes in place. So we left the meeting feeling positive about the direction that Steak ‘n Shake was going in.

The issue was handed over to Greg Fehribach, an attorney who works for Steak ‘n Shake. We stressed to Mr. Fehribach that we wanted to meet with the corporate employees who had the authority to make changes in the drive thru.

On Monday, Howard and I met with Mr. Fehribach and another Steak ‘n Shake attorney. Despite my request to meet near my home, Mr. Fehribach insisted on having the meeting in downtown Chicago. Right then and there, I could see that Steak ‘n Shake wasn’t planning to make this process any easier on me.

At first, our meeting went well as we explained the changes that we hoped to see at Steak ‘n Shake. After the incident in January, I did a lot of research about drive-thrus and experienced several different access options. A Subway in Indiana had a touch-screen menu so I was able to experience what it would be like to use a touch-screen. I visited the Culver’s restaurants that had the Order Assist system in place. I met with the owner of Order Assist and suggested some modifications to the system to make it more accessible.

Imagine the wonderful PR that would result from making a positive change to all of the restaurants and making the drive-thrus accessible, I said.

We quickly learned that the attorneys for Steak ‘n Shake had no interest in pursuing any changes to the Steak ‘n Shake drive-thrus that would require a physical change to the system. They believed that training their employees and providing pre-printed menus would be enough. Neither attorney had even made an attempt to explore the systems that were in use. They were not going to bring about a meeting with the corporate executives who could implement those changes. It was pretty apparent that they wanted me to settle it, not blog about it anymore and make it all go away.

The attorneys brought in the head trainer/manager who discriminated against me. He stiffly issued a canned apology and then left the room. The attorneys would not allow me to say a word or ask questions. After the apology, I got up and left the room. All the emotions of that January day came flooding back– to be denied service because you are deaf in this day and age means that we have so much more work ahead of us to obtain equal access.

So I’ll be joining Karen Tumeh in filing a complaint against a corporation for discrimination in the drive-thru. For the last six months, I explored this issue and tried to affect some positive changes in drive-thru access. I really hoped that Steak ‘n Shake was going to be a leader in this.

It’s just a shame that the corporations don’t want our business.

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