No thanks to the coronavirus, pretty much everyone is now wearing a homemade face mask. But that’s not necessarily a good thing!
For the deaf and hard of hearing, reading lips can be difficult when there’s a huge swath of cloth covering people’s mouths. What are they supposed to do?
Well, one college student put her #stayathome stir-craziness to work and fixed that oversight by sewing clear masks!
Ashley Lawrence, a 21-year-old Eastern Kentucky Univerisity student majoring in deaf education, didn’t even know how to use a sewing machine before she came up with this brilliant idea. She told Lex18 News:
“I just saw that people were making masks on Facebook for everyone to have instead of the throwaway masks, and I was like, what about the deaf and hard of hearing population?”
She was determined to see this project through, and with the help of her very crafty mom, the two quickly came up with a design that incorporated a transparent plastic window around the mouth.
The college senior went on to explain why being able to see a person’s lips is critical for folks who use Amerian Sign Language (ASL) as their primary mode of communication:
“I don’t know if you have seen Virginia Moore on Andy Beshear’s things at five o’clock, but she’s very emotive, and if half of that is gone because you’re wearing a mask then half of what you’re saying is being missed, so even if it’s not physically talking and just using ASL, then you need to have that kind of access.”
The clear window around the mouth is a godsend for those in the deaf community who need to see other people’s facial expressions while they use ASL.
“People who are profoundly deaf and use ASL as their primary mode of communication, ASL is very big on facial expressions, and that’s part of the grammar.”
Ashely also began working on different options for people who wear cochlear implants or large hearing aids. Regular elastic straps may not be able to wrap around the ear when the user is wearing a hearing device, so she’s created straps that can fit around the head and neck.
The materials she uses to craft these transparent DIY masks include things like bedsheets, plastic fabric, elastic, and of course – lots and lots of creativity!
“We started out making them with bed sheets that we had, and luckily bed sheets are big. So we have two or three sets so we’re making them out of that. Then, a couple months ago we needed plastic fabric for something. And so we have a whole roll of that and the window is only this big so having a whole roll is very helpful so luckily we haven’t needed any supplies yet.”
Ashley’s little passion project got so much attention that she ended up creating a DHH Mask Project page on GoFundMe to help raise money for materials.
Up until now, she had been doing this project for free out of her own pocket. The additional monies raised has helped her fulfill orders, which having been pouring in from several different states across the country.
“I’m not charging anything for them because I think that if you need them, then you need them and I don’t think that you should have to pay for them. So we are sending them out for free whenever we have people asking for them.”
Ashley’s GoFundMe page has since gone on to reach its goal, with exactly $3,397 raised, so she’s disabled new donations for now.
She does plan on releasing a YouTube video with instructions on how to make these transparent masks, and will update the project’s GoFundMe page when it’s ready.
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