Three Days to Hear

Three Days to Hear

 Quote of Helen Keller’s autobiography ‘Three days to see’, 

- Sisa Journal, 15/08/2012.

Summary

The 2012 film “Dogani” presented the issue of the human rights of the students of a specialist school in the suburbs which taught children with hearing disabilities. This movie showed how deaf people are mistreated in Korea. Deaf people who are the center of this topic, however, could not even watch the film, as it was screened without subtitles. Furthermore, the social welfare allowance for deaf people is lower than for other disabled persons, largely because a deaf person’s disabilities are not as overt.

This article aimed at vocalising the people that are constantly neglected in society, especially from the view of social safety nets and how the media approaches the rights of disabled people.

Process of Report

1. Draft (May)

Original Title was ‘I had a dream’ but changed to appeal emotionally

2. Researching (May)

Survey 50 hearing disabled university students living in Seoul.

3. Interview (May)

(Face to face) Civil servant from social welfare center, three students from statistical group

(E-mail) Representative of deaf students’ union

- Characteristically of their disabilities, it is not possible to have phone interview

4. Further Research (June)

Searching related clauses, conditions, figures

- Additional interview to central social welfare civil servant

5. Writing (June)

Approximately 4 A4 pages

6. Editing (June, July)

Choose Head, subtitle. Edit draft article to clarify meaning. Add graphics related to topics

Role/Responsibilities

This work was co-written with my friend who also has disabilities in hearing and seeing. Because of his disabilities, I held responsibility for writing and research. I developed both quantitative/qualitative questionnaires, took photographs, formatted graphs, and wrote up the project. My friend gave advice from his perspective as a disabled person in Korea while I did in-depth research on that topic after, such as problems in transportation (Deaf people in Korea rarely use bus due to a lack of signage, and can only use buses with announcements.)

Result of Report

This article was being done as part of our course work ‘News Writing’, and I got the advert of contest. To inform this existing flaw in society, we decided to submit it in to competition. To make reportage strong in a crowded field, I found stories on ‘humanities’ added more stories which able to sympathize.

Differentiation strategy I used was ‘humanity’; put more space on stories of disabled students who want to live as ordinary students instead of government’s policies and figures of budgets.

Many non-disabled students appreciated the point of indirect experience through report as well as evaluation teams.