I haven’t talked about it much on the blog, but most people in my day-to-day life know how particularly smitten I became with the ABC Family show Switched at Birth over the past couple weeks. Set aside the very family drama-high school nature of the show, I’ve become really impressed by their incorporation of not only American Sign Language (ASL) amongst many of its deaf characters, but also in the way that it helps shine a bit of a light on deaf culture. While I’m not deaf myself, I do have many extended family members and close friends who are. So, over the past many years, learning more and more ASL has become increasingly important to me. Just watching this TV show has helped me do that.

On the same accord, learning more about deaf culture and the opportunities afforded to people with varying types of disabilities has become a prominent social and research interest of mine. That’s a big part of the reason why I decided to accept the appointment from Governor McAuliffe earlier this year; to learn more about the plight that faces blind and vision impaired folks in our Commonwealth.

So, this morning, when I learned that yesterday the ride-hailing/sharing service Uber announced an update to their app that cements their partnership with their deaf partners (seemingly their term for drivers), I was actually impressed.  Uber doesn’t always get a lot of love from me to be honest. They aren’t that accessible in terms of my own physical disability, I think their method of surge pricing is oftentimes a bunch of crap, and they tend to overcharge me. Nonetheless, it’s a smart service that I will use in a pinch when I don’t have either the patience of the team to wait for a Metro train.  Seeing them reach out, especially in an area that has such a large concentration of deaf and hard of hearing folks, is impressive. You go Uber!