Meet Taylor

This persona is a fictional profile of a UMaine student. It was created using data to reflect the challenges, successes, and overall experiences of some of our students.

3/4 portrait of a black individual with shoulder length dreadlocks. dark brown eyes, and small earrings, wearing a cream colored suit jacket and a blue buttoned shirt featuring well spaced red vertical lines and white horizontal lines, looking at the camera with their arms crossed on their chest.

Age: 36 years old

Work: Graphic designer for a marketing company specialized in social media communication

Major: Master of Business Administration (MBA) part-time student

Family: Married with two hearing children

Challenge: Deaf, school/work/life

Languages spoken: American Sign Language (ASL), English, Italian

Location: Waterville, ME

Where is home? New England

Pronouns: She/they

Accessibility accommodations: Video phone, American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter

Taylor was born and raised in Massachusetts and moved to Maine shortly after graduation to work as a graphic designer in Portland, where she met her partner. Both Taylor’s and her wife’s families live far away, and they work alternate shifts, so it can be difficult for them to find childcare without advance notice, which has proven to be a challenge at times to attend some of the networking and professional development events organized in some of her classes. Taylor is working towards a Master of Business Administration (MBA) to advance their career.

“In one of my classes, all the content is online in writing, and I am often confronted with walls of text and nothing to break them down. This makes it hard for me to do the reading since American Sign Language (ASL) is so different from English.”

“Sometimes it feels like my professors don’t care about less traditional students. This semester, lots of the networking opportunities happen outside of class time when I need to care for my family, and I cannot always find a babysitter, especially on short notice.”

“One of my professors often speaks with their hand covering their mouth and it affects how well Zoom captions what he is saying. It’s really annoying when this happens and I don’t have an ASL interpreter with me.”

“When we work in groups, students in my group often talk to my ASL interpreter when they want to talk to me, instead of addressing me directly.”

  1. Provide accurate closed captions for all recorded audio and video course material
  2. Provide transcripts of lectures
  3. Schedule events that happen outside of class time ahead of time so students can make arrangements
  4. Facilitate the pace of the class session to provide time for the American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter to accurately communicate with the student
  5. Use clear and precise headings to help break down the course content (consult our tutorial on headings)

Many more students can benefit from these teaching strategies. Learn more about who benefits from these strategies. 

“Events where I don’t have to make a special request to have closed captions because I know they will be available to me.”

“In one of my classes, we can send questions to guest speakers in advance of their talk. It makes it easy for me to participate.”

“In another one of my classes, the professor asked that everyone who records a video response in the discussion board also corrects the captions of their video before they post it to the course, and everybody is doing it!”