A Descriptive Exploratory Study of Layered Access Disparities
Authors:   , Schexnaildre Dixie , Rundio Al 
Published: March 2023

Compared to people without hearing loss, d/Deaf* and Hard of Hearing individuals face direct access and consequential treatment disparities to the gamut of healthcare services in the United States. Systemic inequities persistently contribute to inordinately hindering communication-as highlighted by COVID-19 distancing orders which caused confusion surrounding the use of interpreters in healthcare and education spaces. Additionally highlighted by the pandemic is the need for individuals to learn and implement self-care techniques, especially during isolation-a circumstance disproportionately experienced in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, even outside of pandemic orders. Several components of the holistic practice of yoga such as meditation, breathwork, lifestyle practices, and physical asanas are supportive adjunct therapies for the reduction of mental health conditions related to isolation. Yoga may also reduce the use of negative coping strategies, such as unsafe levels in intake of substances. With so many established benefits, yoga has been increasingly implemented in adult healthcare programs and school settings where d/Deaf children, adolescents, and students of any age in higher education will likely be exposed. However, very few yoga programs are delivered directly in American Sign Language for access by culturally-d/Deaf consumers. A systemic overhaul in the short-term is unfeasible. Well-trained interpreters can reduce inequities in access to health services, but it is not yet known what percentage of interpreters have received training in accurate, safe, effective, and equitable American Sign Language delivery of syncretic yogic concepts. By gathering background information to provide rationale for exploration and analyzing frequency data on the number of current interpreting students and working field professionals with training in interpreting meditation, common Sanskrit terms used by teachers, and other components of yoga instruction from spoken English to American Sign Language, this descriptive study aims to explore whether interpreters contribute to inequitable access barriers in prevention and education yoga settings. Outcomes from the findings could inform continuing education seminars for interpreters, improve training in support of IEP and 504 accommodation plans, and support the need for holistic mental health wellness and recovery programming to reduce the disparate healthcare burden faced by the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing demographic. * Culturally-proud Hard of Hearing (HoH) and Deaf individuals in the United States may identify themselves in writing via use of a capitalized "D" as opposed to "d" in the word "d/Deaf" where "D" indicates community and "d" auditory medical status (Humphries et al., 2012) though there are certainly more than a bifurcated set of identities one may embody, as deafness is a spectrum (Landsberger et al., 2013). Deaf Americans may use American Sign Language (ASL) as their mother tongue and consider themselves part of a cherished cultural linguistic milieu with customs and experiences antithetical to frameworks used by individuals without deafness (Mc Kee et al., 2013; Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). As such, modeled by the National Deaf Center (NDC) and with APA 7 (American Psychological Association, 2020) guidelines in mind to capitalize "Deaf" when applied to identity (p. 136), this project uses the terms "d/Deaf" and "ASL-using" to identify the population of individuals on the spectrum of hearing loss that might be affected by interpreter knowledge/abilities and "deaf" to honor and encompass all differences in "individuals who may identify as d[/D]eaf, deafblind, deafdisabled, hard of hearing, late-deafened, and hearing-impaired" (NDC, 2021), acknowledging many deaf identities exist and that identity is fluid over time and space.