³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Available for over a year

Tip number three - eye contact is so important. So we talk about eye contact, but for all of us, well, within the hearing culture, you think about eye contact, you look all over the place. When you're talking, you look around you, you look up, you look down, but when deaf people communicate, they need to have that eye contact. As soon as you've got the eye contact, you can start the conversation, and as soon as you break the eye contact, you've stopped the conversation. We cannot start a conversation without that direct eye contact. It's respectful to get that eye contact and it's disrespectful to look away. Obviously if something's happening we have to look around, but come back, bring your eye contact back. Don't just drift off and stay staring in the opposite direction and carry on talking. That's not how you communicate. And people start talking, we're trying to lip read them, and they just turn their head away and then just get distracted by something and we can't read their lips or see their eye contact and it's very distracting for us. You know, so if you're talking about all the lovely weather, you know, here it is so sunny here today, isn't it? People love to wear their sunglasses, but that makes it really, really difficult for deaf people. We need to see your eyes to have that eye contact. And you just need to be very aware of that and to remove your sunglasses to give us that eye contact on sunny days.