Shannon Heroux is a fun-loving mom on Instagram who posts about her child, hiking, and her family. She’s also deaf. The deaf community has suffered a great deal during COVID restrictions as one of their main ways of understanding the world around them, lip-reading, has been taken away with mass masking. Heroux posted her first videos on TikTok after she says she reached a breaking point with the discrimination she has suffered for almost two years.
“I am at my breaking point in this pandemic,” she said. Heroux is an Uber driver and went into her favorite Dunkin’ Donuts store to get an iced tea in Encino, California. When she tried to order her drink, she asked the employee to take down her mask so she could read her lips, informing her that she is deaf. Heroux says she wears a cochlear implant but did not have it on that day and could hear nothing. Instead of giving reasonable accommodations to Heroux, like pulling down her mask or writing down her words, the staff member continued talking behind her mask while Heroux heard nothing.-- More...
