Latest news with #deafculture
CTV News
28-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
You must order using sign language at this ByWard Market restaurant this summer
Diners will be required to 'sign for their supper' while sitting on the patio of a restaurant in Ottawa's ByWard Market this summer. Dark Fork opened its restaurant in the ByWard Market last September, the city's first 'dine-in-the-dark restaurant.' Patrons eat in a dark dining room where cellphones and other sources of artificial light are forbidden. With the arrival of patio season, Dark Fork is launching the first ever sign language dining experience on its patio on George Street. 'This summer, Dark Fork – famous for its 'dining in the dark' experience – is stepping into the sunlight with a powerful new concept: a patio where guests 'sign for their supper,'' Dark Fork said in a statement. Starting in June, diners enjoying their meal on the heritage stone patio will be required to place their orders in sign language. 'Staffed by deaf and hard-of-hearing servers, the new outdoor space offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to engage with deaf culture in a welcoming, hands-on way,' the restaurant said. Dark Fork says 'easy-to-follow visual guides' will be placed on each table to show diners how to sign 'please,' 'thank you,' and 'check' along with clear illustrations for each menu item. The 'sign for your supper' patio experience will run from June 4 until the end of the summer. 'This initiative is a collaboration with the Tourism Workplace Accessibility Clinic and is about more than food,' Moe Alameddine, founder of Dark Fork, said in a statement. 'It's about connection, inclusion, and being part of someone else's world for a little while.'
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Deaf President Now! review – stirring record of student protest
'It's awfully difficult to talk above this loud noise,' says the chair of the board of trustees at a liberal arts university. It's the late 1980s, protesting students have shut down the campus and now, midway through a tense meeting, someone has set off the fire alarm. But here's the thing, Gallaudet University in Washington DC is the world's first deaf university. The students can have a conversation just fine with the alarms blaring – in sign language. But trustee chair Jane Bassett Spilman does not sign. In fact, she appears to be completely ignorant about deaf culture – and, dressed like a Margaret Thatcher lookalike, all handbags and helmet hair, she is the easy-to-loathe villain of this fascinating documentary. Co-directed by actor and deaf activist Nyle DiMarco with Davis Guggenheim, this is the story of an eight-day student protest at Gallaudet in 1988. Trouble started when the board, led by Spilman, appointed a hearing person as the university's president, over two deaf candidates. The film's heroes are the four students who led the uprising: Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Jerry Covell, Greg Hlibok and Tim Rarus; they entertainingly interviewed here. With a blend of archive footage and re-enactments the film-makers skilfully recreate the urgency, passion and energy of their protest. In the end, the students won and Gallaudet appointed its first ever deaf president, I King Jordan. Fascinating, too, is the shift in attitudes. What Spilman and her cronies represented was an old mindset that deafness was something to be fixed, that deaf people needed to helped; the students had grown up with that audism. One former student describes being smacked with a ruler at school if he signed, another explains that his deaf grandfather told him not to sign in public. But their generation were done with it. Their energy and spirit of resistance are glorious. Deaf President Now! is on Apple TV+ from 16 May.
