Deaf Woman Films Video in Apartment—Everyone Warns Her About the Same Thing
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
When 34-year-old Rikki Poynter shared a video filmed inside her apartment, she didn't realize it would go viral for an unexpected reason.
Content creator and disability advocate Poynter was prepping a quick dinner the night before a flight, and unbeknownst to her she'd left her microwave timer beeping in the background.
In a video shared on July 9, Poynter, who is deaf, responded to a comment left on a previous TikTok: "You have something beeping in your apartment Rikki."
Her reply video, cheekily captioned: "Deaf person can't hear jack in her own apartment," shows her investigating the noise.
"Flashbacks to when people on Snapchat kept telling me my smoke alarm batteries were dying," she wrote in the video caption.
Pictures from Rikki's TikTok where she shared how she found the unexpected beeping noise.
Pictures from Rikki's TikTok where she shared how she found the unexpected beeping noise.
@rikkipoynter/TikTok
Speaking to the camera, she says: "Let's all figure out what it is together, shall we." As she walks around her apartment, hunting for the source of the sound. A few button presses on the microwave later, and the mysterious beeping stopped.
"I didn't expect 1.2+ million views and a bunch of comments to come from it," Poynter, from Nebraska, told Newsweek. "I'm someone who is often stuck in the 300 view jail so it was surprising to me."
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Server gets note from table mid-shift, what it says leaves her "sobbing"
Server gets note from table mid-shift, what it says leaves her "sobbing"
What started as a playful moment became a subtle commentary on how everyday experiences are shaped differently by disability. Her original video hadn't been about the beeping at all—it was about discrimination between people with different types of disabilities, an issue she regularly tackles. But the microwave timer became an unexpected punchline.
In 2024, study by NORC at the University of Chicago study for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 37.9 million Americans have hearing loss in both ears. While bilateral hearing loss grows exponentially after age 35, leaving one in three people ages 65 to 75 and about three out of four people age 75 and older with some form of hearing loss.
"I didn't originally plan to share the video," Poynter said. "It just so happened I forgot I had the timer on... and then I wanted to keep the sassy going.
Over the last decade, Poynter has built a platform focused on advocacy, accessibility, and connection—especially for deaf people who, like her, grew up without access to American Sign Language or proper support.
It is estimated that around one million people throughout the U.S. use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate as their native language, making it the third most commonly used language in the U.S. after English and Spanish. ASL is used by the deaf, hard-of-hearing and those with communication disorders, giving people an essential tool for communication.
Despite this, 98 percent of deaf people do not receive education in sign language, and 72 percent of families do not sign with their deaf children.
"I want people to know that they have a community that's out there waiting for them if they would like to be in it," Poynter said.
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