A bill that will allow deaf or hard-of-hearing people to notify the DMV of their hearing loss and have it linked to their registration , has been signed into law by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, according to an article on the ABC Columbia website. The law will go into effect in 2021.
Rep. Chris Wooten, a former police officer who introduced Bill H3357 in 2019, had previously experienced pulling over hard-of-hearing individuals who he was unable to communicate with. With the new law, officers who run a deaf individual’s license plate will be able to see if they have a hearing loss before they approach the vehicle, ABC reports.
“Some deaf and hard-of-hearing people are afraid of miscommunication or misunderstanding when they’re in that situation, so I think this is really important that they know that we’re deaf or hard of hearing ahead of time,” Anita Steichen-McDaniel, executive director of South Carolina Association of the Deaf (SCAD), was quoted as saying in the article.
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