Alumna Akangksha Sarmah’s final year project #ReDEAFine is a designer-driven awareness campaign to make an active effort to address and gain a deeper understanding of the Deaf culture and their community by educating the hearing masses. For individuals with severe hearing loss or deafness, communication in the form of a gesture-based sign language is often required. Hence, a learning effort must be taken on by every individual who wishes to communicate with the Deaf community and currently, the effort is missing in the society.
The core of the issue begins with the ignorance towards their language, culture, and diversity of the community. This leads to challenges throughout their lives from education to employability. Most hearing people are unaware of this because; they haven’t been given the chance to be exposed to the diversity of other minorities. Chances are, at this day of time, they are more likely to see Deaf people among in the society but they do not know how to encounter the Deaf people. Hence, the struggle will be ever present if not addressed with an alternate perspective.
The hybrid campaign #Redefine, with digital and print influencers, focuses on targeting hearing individuals who are part of the urban educated youth from the age group of 18-25 years old. They are from the college-going population and venturing into recent employment. This campaign will mainly be focused around the exhibit where a cultural insight of their community will be highlighted by encouraging conversations between the two parties – hearing and the deaf. Hence, an encouragement of a cultural perspective by the hearing individuals of the deaf community for greater work inclusivity, empathy and eventually creating better opportunities for the people being part of the deaf culture.
#Redeafine has been selected for ‘Global Grad Show’ to be held in Dubai in the month of November 2018. Global Grad Show is an an expo of life changing inventions from the world’s largest design and technology schools, and it takes place during Dubai Design Week.
Akangksha’s journey at Pearl Academy Noida has been absolutely great. When asked about her experience she said, “These four years have lots of ups and downs. One of the best years, I would say, was my 3rd year because I got the opportunity to intern with Penguin Random House India and it was one of the greatest semesters. One of the best things about Pearl is that the faculty supports you, no matter what. They always give you feed backs and you can always fall back on them.” Click to know more.
