Hello Chief Delphi!
Several FRC students are currently working on a potential program that would offer online ASL courses for FIRST volunteers to have a rudimentary knowledge of basic FRC-related signs at events to better serve our DHH population and/or others who use sign. We would love it if any DHH students, alumni, or mentors- or anyone else interested could take a couple of minutes to fill a survey out to help us better understand the need and/or want for this. Thank you in advance!
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I might not have read the part where you were asking specifically for DHH people to fill out the form until after I did it, but I’m very excited to help with this! A lot of people who are important to me are DHH, so I’d personally love this resource.
Honestly, learning ASL for “plug in your ethernet cable” and “turn on your robot” would probably be a thousand times more effective than the humorous-but-ineffective gesticulation through the driver station glass I currently do (assuming the other human also knows ASL).
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I have in the past had “TURN ON ROBOT” written on the back of my volunteer badge (upside down of course!)
I think ASL courses would be super helpful, even if it’s just for a few key phrases. I do think depending on the role, there might be different phrases that are useful, and more effective methods (ie. FTA tends to have a tablet in 1 hand most of the time, and could be faster with typing/writing)
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I know I’ve seen some FTAs/FTAAs at some point with some app on their tablet/phone with several large-print preconfigured messages for showing through the driver station glass, including things like they need to turn on their robot, or plug in, or something along the lines of “get back out here onto the field” to fix something.
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I’ve FTAA’d several events and had to literally run around the field to tell teams to do things, which as a disabled person, is ROUGH. I’m totally stealing this idea, and the idea of writing on my badge, its genius! lol
I know I’ll be upping my game this year - I’m planning on laminated cards I can put up against the glass:
“Your Robot Works Better On”
“Please Come Back On The Field”
“Your Robot Misses You”
“Please Plug In Your Driver Station Ethernet Cable”
and maybe a game-specific one this year.
Also need to refresh my stock on Red/Yellow Uno Reverse cards.
If I have time and maybe get AI to generate a decent pictorial representation (cuz I know I don’t have that skill) I may use that on the back.
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Fta humor is the best
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I tend to carry a tablet when FTAAing so that I dont need to worry about my eyes working well enough to see across the field, but I do keep some “large format text” notes on there for exactly that purpose.
That said, back to OP. As an alum of RIT, home to NTID, I would be remiss to not at least offer to try getting you in contact with someone there. They are one of the largest DHH schools in the country (if not world) and offer an ASL Interpreting degree program as well as several levels of ASL as a second language. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some students in need of a project that would love to help you assemble some training materials for this!
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