Lars – deaf

Meet Lars

Lars

Lars, aged 19, was born deaf and learnt sign language as a child. His elder sister, his younger brother and his mother also learnt sign language. Lars can do some lip reading, but does not feel confident in it. His pronunciation is very unclear because he cannot hear, but he can read and write well. He is currently studying computer science at university.

A day in the life of Lars

Lars has a great interest in films. He mostly watches DVDs that have subtitles. He is very confident using computers and the Internet. He often watches online videos. However, most of the automatically created subtitles are not very good. He prefers video with manually created subtitles.
The TV programs he watches are mainly programs with subtitles. Like other young people, he now mainly uses the Internet for news and TV programs. In the past, he used text telephone or captioned telephone for telecommunication. He can also use TTY relay services to communicate with non-deaf people. But nowadays, he mostly uses SMS, e-mail, and chat applications on his mobile phone.

At university, most of the slides and the writing on whiteboards are good enough for him to understand the teaching. Some lecturers provide text transcripts for him. In big group meetings, such as the information meeting before each academic year, the university provides sign language interpreters for him and other students whose primary language is signing. For group projects, he mainly uses writing and drawing in face-to-face meetings, and chat and e-mail for online collaboration with other group members.
Lars uses public transportation to get to the university. Metro trains, trams and buses all have screens showing their line number, the next step and the final stop, so he usually has no difficulty getting around the city. However, when there is an emergency stop, the announcement is only made through the loudspeaker and Lars is confused about what is happening.

During holidays, Lars often takes the train or an airplane to visit relatives who live far away. He likes the train better because the information is given on screen or on printed paper. Sometimes the airplane does not have subtitles for its in-flight video, so he reads the safety leaflet on the plane. At home, Lars has a light notification facility and a bed vibrator that connects to the alarm clock, the smoke detector, the doorbell and the telephone. When he sleeps, the bed vibrator is under his pillow.

See also the needs & preferences set for Lars.

German translation of Lars (PDF).

Text: © Copyright: Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus (Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences), 2015. The text is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).

Image: © Copyright: The University of Southampton, 2016. This image is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).

German translation: Hochschule der Medien / Stuttgart Media University.

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