Yosemite National Park brings back deaf services after cuts

After cutting its deaf services coordinator position last year, Yosemite National Park has brought the job back and gone a step beyond to better serve its hearing impaired visitors.

The park has hired its first ever year-round deaf services coordinator who is fluent in American Sign Language. Before the position was cut, it was only seasonal.

We reported on the lack of a sign language interpreter and its impact on Deaf visitors last year. At the time, Tom Medema, the Chief of Interpretation and Education at Yosemite, said the change came from “a one-year issue.”

(Chief of Interpretation doesn’t have anything to do with sign language interpreters — it’s more about connecting visitors with the park’s resources.)

Medema said that the park had planned to use entrance fee dollars to fund a four-year deaf services position, but then found out that wasn’t allowed.

“We’re very restricted in what we can use that money for,” he said. “We found that out too late last year to hire a seasonal coordinator, so we were stuck.”

Now one of the park’s long-time staff members is retiring, which provided the chance “to reassess and reevaluate our priorities,” Medema said. They decided to replace that person with someone who’s both well versed in the park’s history and environment, and is an ASL interpreter.

"It’s not just seasonal, she’ll be there year round."

“It’s an even better scenario than what had before, because it’s not just seasonal; she’ll be there year round,” Medema said. He said that matches with the changes to visitation at Yosemite. More people are coming year round, including Deaf visitors.

Yosemite has a long history of providing exceptional deaf services, starting in 1979, when the park established a deaf services coordinator as one of its recurring summer ranger jobs.

That first ranger provided sign language interpreting for visitors and set up a teletype phone device (TTY), trained other staff to communicate with deaf visitors, created signs for some of the park’s vocabulary and publicized the program to the Deaf community.

Yosemite became the only national park with a dedicated staff member to run a deaf services program.

Four years ago, the park hired a ranger to be a full-time interpreter and deaf services coordinator whose only job would be to provide sign language interpretation and do outreach to the Deaf community. That was the job that was cut last year.

In the fall of 2014, Yosemite's deaf services program celebrated its 35th anniversary with a special weekend of activities for Deaf visitors. The park recently posted YouTube videos of some of those visitors explaining what visiting Yosemite means to them.

"Yosemite is a phenomenal place," said one visitor. "I remember the feeling I had when I first gazed up at Half Dome. It gave me chills, I was so inspired."

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