Catching Up with CSD Chief Executive Chris Soukup

When I recently caught up with Chris Soukup over email amidst Disability Pride Month and ahead of the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) 35th birthday later this month, the chief executive officer of Communication Service for the Deaf (CSD) explained to me plainly and succinctly he believes disability to be “an inherent part of the human condition.” How those in the disability community experience the world around them, he went on to rightfully tell me, “is continuously evolving throughout our lives.”

“Disability Pride Month is a celebration of how these experiences vary, the beauty of our collective intersection, and our commitment to unity and inclusion,” Soukup said. “The ADA and laws similar to it provide our society with important guardrails to ensure that no one is inadvertently or intentionally left behind as progress and innovation propel us into the future.”

As I wrote in my profile of Soukup and CSD last October, CSD, established in 1975, is a self-described “Deaf-led social impact organization” which exists to “create a better world for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people.” In a nutshell, CSD is devoted to the betterment of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community; in January, the organization announced it was supporting efforts for the Los Angeles-area Deaf community whose lives were upended by the wildfires that utterly ravaged the Southern California region.

Deaf people, Soukup said, still bear the brunt of bias by society writ large. Discrimination in the workplace, as well as unemployment altogether, remain “pervasive issues” for the community, he said. Not only are securement and sustainability problematic for Deaf job-seekers, Soukup went on to say, career advancement is equally few and far between for Deaf workers. And although technology has unquestionably broken down barriers and subsequently increased access to communication and information, the reality is there still exists “significant challenges,” according to Soukup. Many Deaf people, he said, remain reliant upon intermediaries—people like sign language interpreters, for one—to facilitate proper communication. It’s oftentimes difficult, Soukup said, to ensure “qualified individuals are always available to facilitate between a signing Deaf person and a non-signer.”

Soukup believes a crucial part of gaining greater accessibility is good storytelling.

“[It’s] so important,” he said. “Amplifying and spotlighting people with disabilities that are thriving and achieving their goals is so important. There is not enough attention in the media. People who identify as being disabled make up at least 25% of the population. We need to be seen, and our successes should be celebrated as an opportunity to transform how people perceive disability.”

When asked to elaborate more on the ADA’s significance, Soukup told me the law (and any extending legislation) is of crucial import because they provide “important protection” to all disabled Americans. He reiterated a popular refrain in the disability community, which is the ADA is seen as the “floor” rather than the ceiling. The ADA, Soukup said, is a “baseline” atop of which society can “[build] a world that is designed to be more inclusive from the beginning.” The disability community, he added, would “love” to see lawmakers go further with regulation by “[continuing] to close gaps and eliminate barriers that make it harder for people with disabilities to lead fulfilling lives.”

Soukup’s last sentiment was a good segue into talking about the future. In peering into his proverbial crystal ball, he said it’s his hope society reaches at point at which we “normalize disability.” In addition, he spoke of the domino effect disability has on the lives of everyone, disabled or not, saying “we recognize that when we speak about disability, we are talking about everyone: ourselves, our families, [and] our loved ones.”

“Embracing disability as an ordinary part of what it means to be human expands our thinking and challenges some of the implicit bias that we carry,” Soukup said of his hopes and dreams for disability’s societal future. “A Deaf person can be an incredible physician, airline pilot, college professor, or entrepreneur. Our work is closer to being achieved when the general public internalizes and embraces all of these possibilities.”