(With thanks to Marnie Kerridge for the Auslan translation at the end- Please watch in conjunction with the photos within)

Faux pas?? For all of my Deaf and hard of hearing colleagues who may know its meaning but never have heard it pronounced, it is pronounced foh PAH. But what is a faux pas? In French it literally means a false step. In English it refers to embarrassing social blunders.

You know when a woman may have put on some weight and someone asks her when she is due. Or someone might be terminally ill and they are asked what diet they are on because they have lost so much weight. I don’t use these examples to be funny, rather I use them to show extreme examples of how embarrassing and insensitive a faux pas can be.

A very famous faux pas was made by the interpreter of the late US President, Jimmy Carter. Apparently Carter wanted to know what Poland desired for the future. Somehow his interpreter translated this to “I desire Poles carnally.”

The late Prince Phillip of the British Royal family, most famous for being the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was known to let slip a faux pas or three. He once asked Australian Aboriginal representatives during a cultural display if they still threw spears at each other. The late Phillip could be insensitive and embarrassing at the best of times.

If you have a disability you will be used to being the subject of many a faux pas. You know being asked “What’s wrong with you?” or calling people with a disability brave. Or telling them it’s lovely to see them out and about. Us disabled’s have heard em all. So common is it that here is even a game called disability faux pas bingo, I kid you not. Check it out HERE.

But you know what is the most common kind of faux pas for people with a disability? It’s f#$&ing up disability access. It’s frustrating, extremely so. I cope by laughing, because if I didn’t I would cry.

Like the hotel that had braille signs to label the toilets. You know you go up to the door and there is a sign says Male/Female toilet. Below the written part is Braille so that people who are Blind know which toilet they are going into. All very good and proper except there was this one hotel I visited that had placed the braille signs on the inside of the toilet door instead of the outside. Out the front there was the typical written sign, inside there was the Braille sign. Supposedly blind people busting for the loo go inside the door, feel for the Braille and hope to god that they were in the right loo. I pointed it out to the manager. She said “Yeah you’re right, we better fix that.” I don’t know if they ever did.

Or there was the recreation centre at Yarra Junction in Victoria that converted the disabled toilet into a storage room. I pointed out that this wasn’t appropriate and they needed to clear it out so it could be used as a toilet. They promised me that they would fix it. Do you know how they fixed it? They took the toilet sign of the door so that they could continue to use it as a storage cabinet. No one ever used it they told me, they could use the one in the change rooms. ( This one made me particularly angry, especially as my boss supported them.)

Then there are Victorian accessible tram stops. Victoria has been working towards making its public transport more accessible. They have spent a considerable amount of money on making many tram stops accessible. The aim is for them to all eventually be accessible. They build them up and they have ramps so that people in wheelchairs, mothers with prams, people with physical disabilities etc can access the stops and step or wheel directly onto the trams. It’s a terrific initiative.

Except … They service many of these wonderful stops with trams that have steps. So you get yourself up on to the tram stop with this wonderful ramp. You’re excited to get on the tram except you are confronted with this …

Or even more frustratingly you get yourself to the wonderful new accessible stop only to be confronted by this sign …

I can not begin to imagine how frustrating this is. But I do know that being deaf at a train station and watching everyone moving around in chaos, trains late or not arriving can be very stressful. I and many other people who are Deaf or hard of hearing do know how frustrating it is to be confronted by this …

It can be so much fun (not) being disabled in Australia!!!

As a deaf person I can tell you that Australian Government departments are absolutely top dog when it comes to disability faux pas. Like NDIS planners asking someone with Down Syndrome if they have evidence that their impairment is permanent. Yes this happened! Or a worker I supervised who put in her report that a participant with cerebral palsy was still walking into walls to highlight that they had coordination issues. (No, I didn’t let that one go out.)

But the biggest and most frustrating thing for people who are Deaf and hard of hearing is to have organisations like Australian Hearing, the NDIA, Centrelink etc to not grasp that they cannot just “Call” people who are Deaf or hard of hearing on the phone. Or call out their name when they are in the waiting room!

So recently I was at Centrelink assisting someone to sign up for Jobseeker, using automatic captioning because there were no interpreters available. The services officer told the person I was assisting to expect a phone call interview to finalise their jobseeker payment. “And how will they manage that?“, I asked. Credit to the service officer, they were extremely embarrassed, apologised and organised a face to face interview. But still!

Or the NDIA text messages that tell you that the NDIA will call in fifteen minutes about your plan. Or Australian Hearing and other Audiology services “Calling” to confirm appointments. Let’s not get started with their insistence of calling out your name in waiting rooms even though you tell them you won’t hear them! Or the agencies that have Facetime for Auslan users except often there is no one on it so that no one answers! As I said, it’s so much fun (Not)

So there you have it. Disability accessibility faux pas in Australia. It is rampant. I guess as bad as it is, it’s good for a giggle. BUT! – Surely we can do better than this!