With Thanksgiving (et al.) barreling our way, there’s been an uptick in conversations in the deaf world about what it means to go home for the holidays, particularly when home is a place where communication is hardest.

In the US, only 8% of parents ever learn enough ASL to have a conversation with their deaf children, so signing deaf people are often isolated from their own immediate families, and in a season when extended families are gathering, communication with those folks can be even tougher. But even hard-of-hearing, and late-deafened people (like the elderly) who use spoken language can struggle during a loud holiday event—assistive technology like hearing aids and cochlear implants is not very good at differentiating from the thing you want to listen to and, say, someone dropping the gravy tureen in the next room, which makes following a conversation difficult. And it’s never a good time trying to lipread people who are talking with their mouths full.

The result of all this is a phenomenon known in the community as Dinner Table Syndrome—that feeling of being alone and isolated in the place where we are supposed to feel at our safest.

Back in early pandemic I interviewed deaf scholars about how Dinner Table Syndrome has shaped our community, and examined the effects of DTS during the shift to remote gatherings for the BBC here, if you want a deeper dive.