By Ryan Dave Poral, BA COMMUNICATION 4

The CPU Special Needs Education Society conducted a 1-day webinar DEAFying DISPARITY: A Deaf Culture Awareness and Basic Filipino Sign Language Training Webinar, on March 4, 2023 via Google Meet.

The said webinar aims to build awareness about the Deaf Culture and the community itself in general. It was a great opportunity also to practice and learn the Filipino Sign Language.

“We conducted this program with an aim to share our advocacy which is inclusivity. This is only a small step actually. There are still many barriers that needs to be tackled and should be broken down. We believe that before we can have a genuine and true inclusive education, we need first to create awareness, and to have more inclusive individuals, we need to stop seeing disability as a barrier. Yes, they do need extra help and accommodation, but it does not mean that they are not capable of doing things. The reason behind defying disparity is that we wanted to defy the odds, the inequality, the discrimination, and and the barrier that separate others from the deaf. This is only a start and if given a chance we would like to continue in creating awareness regarding the different disabilities,” Faith Rivas said, President of CPU SNED.

She also added, “Awareness about something brings such a huge impact to someone. For example, someone who is not aware of how deaf people perceive a hearing person, or does not know the culture of the deaf, may be afraid to interact with a deaf person. There will always be hesitations and sometimes they choose to ignore them because of not knowing what to do. But the truth is that deaf people do not mind if we know how to sign or not, they just need to feel included, they actually understand the fact that not all people know how to sign, so they are very accommodating about it. Just simple gestures, having the courage to make them feel included is so meaningful for the deaf people, and same with the other people with disabilities.”

The speaker for the said event was Ember Parpa who is the Founder of Deaf Access Services – Philippines. She has more than 20 years of experiences as an Interpreter with active engagement among Deaf communities. She is knowledgeable in Filipino Language and can do both Sign Language Interpreting and Voice Interpreting.