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In a medical emergency or in the event of a traffic stop by law enforcement, members of the deaf community may find themselves in dangerous situations because there is no way to inform medical staff or officers that they are hard of hearing or deaf.
One McAllen ISD educator has led the way to have a designation on Texas state IDs and driver's licenses that signifies the individual is hard of hearing or deaf.
Liza Lara is the director of the Regional Day School Program for the Deaf. She is aware that officials who encounter deaf and hard of hearing individuals may think their orders are being ignored because they don’t know about the deaf person’s disability.
Lara came up with the idea for a deaf designation on state IDs when she was invited to attend the annual South Texas All Hazards Conference, the second-largest emergency response training event in Texas.
“And they wanted to know is there a pathway or something that we can do where members of our deaf community can come and learn also about the different emergency systems that we have in place," said Lara. "And also get feedback from them as far as how can we be better prepared to serve our deaf community in an emergency.”
First responders supported Lara’s idea, and she was even able to get state legislators involved.
“From there, we were able to make contact with State Representative Bobby Guerra, and he's the one that really helped us as far as how to write the bill and the whole process, and what needed to be done to see if it would even survive to become a law,” said Lara.
Lara strongly suggests that people advocate for bills they strongly believe in, even if everything looks hopeless.
“When you first start, there's so many bills on there. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. And then as time goes by, you see them kind of just dying off, and there's fewer and fewer, and fewer of them left that are actually going to become law,” Lara said. “So when you finally see that the one that you're supporting actually makes it, and the governor signs it and it becomes law, you feel like, wow, we did something.”
Lara said daily contact with the deaf community helped her stay focused on pursuing the designation.
“Having that connection to our deaf community in that way just kept reminding me every day, like, okay, this needs to get done. I have meetings with parents and I see their concern and they're asking me about it: ‘When can I take my son to get that on their state ID?’ or ‘my son already got a job and he has a state ID, but they told me I couldn't have it on there.’ So I think that's mainly what kept me still,” said Lara.
Lara also credits her staff for continuing to advocate for the deaf community.
“Getting with my staff and telling them, 'OK, well, you call a DMV, see what's up. Where are they at with it, and let me send another email,'” said Lara. “Because I wanted for my students and for our families to have that peace of mind. I knew it was very, very important to our parents and to our students and our deaf community. We have a really large deaf community here in the (Rio Grande) Valley, and so this is for the whole state of Texas.”
Qualified deaf Texans can now have the designation on their Texas IDs and driver’s licenses as of May this year thanks to Lara’s efforts.
The ID cards issued under the Texas Driving with Disabilities Program display the words “Deaf/Hard of Hearing” prominently on the card’s face.
