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I, a privileged hearing citizen, have been picking up a visual-gestural language while witnessing the struggles of my dear friends and colleagues. With the lack of systematic training and certification of sign interpreters, Hong Kong has been a phonocentric audist city where Deaf and hard-of-hearing citizens would require hearing family members and friends to cover interpreting services across different sectors. Becoming a sign interpreter was not a choice for me. It was a path I happened to take when I began my career as a research assistant in a sign linguistics lab. Looking back on this path, it is technically a care web co-built by the members of the Deaf community and the sign interpreter community. “Care web” has been built by signers and readers, be them Deaf, hard-of-hearing, or hearing. Within this Crip space that floats everywhere within the city, “accessibility through sign language” is always the key for everyone to live with dignity.

With the development of smartphones and tablets, more and more Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in Hong Kong have been using these gadgets to record their own signing. Some of them might post their Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) videos online through social media, online video platforms, and so forth. The content of these videos might be related to any news that happened within days or any stories within the Deaf community. When the members find that the content is important, these videos would be spread through different instant messaging platforms. One of these chat groups has been administered by the same Deaf volunteers who set up the YouTube channel and Facebook page called “Hong Kong Deaf News.” They summarize what is going on in our city in HKSL and allow some illiterate Deaf elderly people to learn the news. Care web within the Deaf community could be very much like an online Crip space using signing videos to: share news; fill the gap where public information is not accessible; send out warnings about underqualified interpreters’ profiles; and to connect Deaf individuals who might have be quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking back to the good old days before the pandemic outbreak, regular social gatherings of Deaf friends happened everywhere in fast food chains, in Deaf clubs, in Deaf-friendly businesses, or anywhere downtown at physical Crip spaces. Deaf signers who are proficient written Chinese readers often summarize the weekly news to others. Some of them are storytellers passing down HKSL literature in the form of Deaf jokes, signing poetry, and life wisdom. Be it small talk or gossip, information sharing has been part of the routines of these meetings. As a hearing sign language interpreter myself, I was sometimes invited to join these gatherings to meet more Deaf friends and pick their brains to learn more HKSL variations and local Deaf history. One time, two Deaf friends and I made our way to the center of the group to make an announcement about a questionnaire. The data collected was going to be used in a news release of a self-help organization to advocate for a live sign interpreting service on all TV news broadcasts. We told the group what had happened in the past few months in our city and how much information was not accessible to most Deaf citizens. In the middle of our short introduction, many signers had already held up their hands in the air and signed “BAD, BAD, BAD!” As always, the discussion dived into the issue, “How come we didn’t know about this and that?” We didn’t even finish what we had prepared to say. “It already happened months ago?!” one of them signed furiously with frustration. It broke my heart at that very moment on that evening of June 29, 2019, that many people did not know what was happening. Something had been very wrong in our city. Why would some citizens not have access to daily news? With neither live sign interpreting nor real-time captioning, many Deaf citizens did not understand why the roads were sometimes blocked by protestors. Without the information care web built by themselves, they might not even notice the arguments between the eggs and the wall.

Whenever we discuss accessible information through sign interpreting and translation, one might blame the victim by asking them to wear hearing aids or go for cochlear implantation surgeries. “As long as they use hearing-assistive devices, they should be able to hear what we say,” some audists said. Should we go in-depth to the anatomy of the auditory system in order to explain the ineffectiveness of hearing technology? One might also blame the victim by demeaning the literacy levels of these Deaf citizens. “They should learn to read better in written Chinese,” some educators of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing said. Should we look at how our education system failed them? Mainstreaming oralism has been doing harm for more than 130 years [1] while Deaf and hard-of-hearing children have been deprived of their rights to sign language. It was not until 2010, that the only deaf school [2] left in Hong Kong reinstated the use of HKSL in the education setting of primary and secondary schools [3]. Many young signers, who are now fluent in HKSL, either graduated from this deaf school or from a privately funded sign bilingual program. When they enter tertiary education, these Deaf students have to fight for sign interpreting services during their meetings with the units coordinating all students of special education needs (SEN). “We are not providing sign interpretation services for you because we want you to learn how to integrate yourself into society,” one SEN coordinator said. “Not until we have exhausted all other types of resources, sign interpreting would not be considered because it is the last resort,” another SEN coordinator said, during a meeting that followed one-year-long proof that live-captioning apps were inaccurate and of no use [4]. With the beauty of Cantonese profanity, sign interpreters swore a lot after providing pro bono services during these meetings. In response to all this ridiculous stupidity, the following lines have been in my email signature for years:

“Conscience is not only about a person’s moral sense of right and wrong. It is also your behaviour and response, as well as action, towards brutality and oppression within our society.”

This text was printed on the outside of tote bags in 2020. We sold these bags among other handmade items to raise funds to provide sign interpreting service in colleges and universities. In return, one of the students said, “I don’t want to spend a dollar from this fund. All other college students are facing the same difficulty. Let them make use of this money.” What is wrong with our system? Did we set it up to make them fail? Why would a care web be required for education access? With the network of sign interpreters, private donors, and a few non-governmental organizations, we had been struggling to support less than a dozen students’ undergraduate and postgraduate studies. There are another dozen students working within the system and trying self-study to make their way to graduation.

The beauty of care web is that all the members know each other well enough to provide necessary support to everyone within the web. The cruelty of having a care web is the reason why we have to build one in the first place. Did the system fail some of us? Most of us? The underprivileged? The sick?

Healthcare settings require basic medical knowledge and specific translation skills to facilitate communications between patients and healthcare professionals. Due to different reasons, care web for healthcare access was also formed to assure better interpretation quality and confidentiality. Deaf interpreters do all the writing back and forth with doctors on behalf of illiterate d/Deaf patients. Hearing friends might do simultaneous interpretation or leave their phone numbers as an emergency contact. We have all been the companion in clinics, emergency rooms, sexual assault kit collections, psychiatric wards, and so forth, except for surgery and delivery rooms only because we were banned from entering. We have all been asked why the patients opted NOT to use the officially arranged “hand language translators.” That’s right, they do not even label us appropriately as “sign language interpreters” on the appointment slips. Over decades, meetings with hospital authorities, service providers, and legislators have been held from time to time. Sadly, lives have been lost due to miscommunication between patients and healthcare professionals, due to the misconduct of sign language service providers, and due to all unspoken systematic oppression. Ironically, the system is not technically broken, it has been built this way, and now it challenges the underprivileged. The more unspeakable unfairness that happens, the stronger the system becomes.

While we try our best to advocate for human rights, care web looks very much like the immediate solutions to all the problems caused by our system. While we try our best to survive within the oppressive system, building a Crip space ensures that no one would be left behind. We care, therefore everyone within this web might have a chance to live long and prosper. We sign, therefore everyone has access through language within this Crip space. We speak up, for our beliefs in freedom, for our beliefs in human rights, for the universal value that everyone should live with dignity.