When teacher Arlene Cristina, 51, went out into the street wearing a mask adapted with transparency in the lip area, many people thought it was strange and stared at her face. "People would look. I think they thought I wanted to show off my lipstick," she jokes. The transparency in place of the fabric, however, was not the result of simple vanity. Arlene decided to make the adapted mask so that her daughter Nathalie Cooper, 26, could see her mouth: hard of hearing, the young woman uses lip-reading to communicate.
Diagnosed with bilateral deafness at 5 years of age, Nathalie is an oralized deaf person — meaning she is able to speak and communicates in Portuguese, but needs lip-reading to understand others.
"I thought she could hear because she spoke very well. Until one day, at the hospital, a doctor put a sheet of paper in front [of her mouth] and she said, 'I can't hear you,'" Arlene recounts. "The doctor said she was lip-reading, that she wasn't hearing."
Due to the need to wear masks because of the new coronavirus pandemic, Nathalie says that new difficulties have appeared in her routine and that, because of this, she has been feeling "powerless." "I can't get by on my own anymore. You can't go around asking people to take off their masks," she states.
Internet tutorial
The idea for the transparent mask, Arlene recounts, came after Nathalie needed to go to the bank to speak with her manager. Since the employees would be wearing masks, the young woman asked her mother to accompany her to help with communication. The situation, however, ended up causing even more nervousness.
"She was talking to the manager, but all the time I had to take off my mask to convey to her what he was saying," says Arlene, who says she soon noticed her daughter's discomfort. "It's dangerous. I was very worried," agrees Nathalie.
At home, the mother searched for alternatives on the internet and found a tutorial that taught how to make the adapted mask — she just had to adjust the pattern to her measurements. Arlene says that, despite the transparent plastic in the lip area, the mask is no more uncomfortable than those made entirely of fabric.
"Every mask is uncomfortable. For me, [the adapted mask] has the same level of discomfort as the fabric one. I breathe normally because the fabric goes up to my nose, she explains.
"I was very relieved because it worked out, it was easy to understand, and [with the mask] it was one less risk," says Nathalie. Happy, her daughter decided to post a photo of her mother wearing the mask on social media — and the post ended up going viral.
"I was happy, because it's something a lot of people didn't know. And hearing-impaired people who saw the post felt represented. I even agreed to send masks to two girls from Rio de Janeiro, I'll send them by mail," Arlete recounts.
"I can't go to the bakery"
Even with the mask adaptation made by her mother, Nathalie says she lost a lot of her independence with the pandemic and the need to wear masks on the streets.
"I can't do simple things, like going to the bakery. I realized I became even more reclusive," she says.
She makes an appeal for people, at this moment, to think of those with hearing impairments. "When people talk about accessibility, everyone thinks of the wheelchair user," she points out.
"People don't have information. In fact, a guy was rude to me [on social media] and accused me of forcing her to do lip-reading instead of using Brazilian Sign Language, but I never forced her," says Arlene. "Within deafness, there is a lot of diversity," she shares.
SOURCE:
UOL
