Kate

I wanted to leave a review after working at this place for over a year now. I have been blown away with how Sno-Isle Libraries has been great about providing ASL interpreters for our trainings, workshops, staff meetings, and supervisory meetings. Lynnwood Library is the largest and busiest branch out of all of the branches at Sno-Isle Libraries with a diversity of customers, volunteers and staff. The staff have been great about writing on paper and emailing with me whenever we need to communicate with each other. There is another staff at this library who is Deaf as well and she is able to speak and lipread. I have observed the staff making sure to face this Deaf co-worker and speak clearly plus loud enough for her to understand. I appreciate how the staff have been respectful about the differences with communication and not thinking that I'm able to speak/listen like my other co-worker. When I first joined, one of the supervisors was firm about respecting this difference by only writing on paper with me instead of speaking to me like what the staff was used to doing with another Deaf co-worker. I appreciated her support for this because it helped set the workplace in the right direction about how to communicate with me and that not everyone is the same. 

Shortly after being hired, I turned in a request to have a Videophone installed at Lynnwood Library for the public to use and it was recently installed before the end of 2014. I have been excited about this new additional as a way of making this library more Deaf-friendly and accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. I also have been actively posting ASL Word of the Week in the break room on the bulletin for staff to learn some basic words (ex. books, library, thank you, etc.) so they are able to communicate with us and with Deaf and Hard of Hearing customers. I have received positive feedback on this project and staff have expressed interest with the new ASL words being posted. There is also an ABC fingerspelling chart on the bulletin as well.