The adventurous deaf American duo, Scott Lyman and Sheena Unger, were able to achieve a great achievement and document it via “YouTube”, which includes their experience as they make their way to the summits of the highest mountains in the world. On May 22, Unger became the first deaf woman ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

By chance, on the way to the top, Unger and Lihmann met the second deaf person to reach the summit – Malaysian national Mohd Hawari Hashim – who climbed to the summit on May 18 and is seen smiling proudly as he holds the Malaysian flag in a photo shared on social media.

Three deaf people climbed the world’s tallest mountain in a matter of days, just a few years after the Nepalese Supreme Court overturned a ban on disabled climbers, according to CNN.

World Federation of the Deaf

The International Federation of the Deaf estimates that there are 70 million deaf people in the world, who use more than 300 different sign languages. Until this year, only one deaf person has climbed Everest – Japanese climber Satoshi Tamura, an alpine skier who succeeded on his third attempt, in 2016.

The following year, Nepal announced that it would no longer issue climbing permits to people with disabilities, including the deaf, with some claiming it would provide more Sherpa work on the mountain to accommodate them..

The decision angered climbers with disabilities, including Hari Buddha Magar, a Nepalese-born Gurkha soldier who became an amputee when he stepped on an explosive device while serving in Afghanistan..

He was one of the members of the Coalition of Nepalese Disabled who fought the ban in the Supreme Court of Nepal, and in 2018 it was overturned. Magar successfully summited Everest on May 19 this year, becoming the first double amputee above the knee to complete the ascent..

Everest’s environment can make communication difficult for anyone, deaf or not. The winds and swirling snow can make it difficult to see and hear, and the darkness adds an extra layer of visual challenge.

The beginning of the journey 8 years ago

Unger and Lyman only started climbing together in 2015, although they have been a couple since high school. Lehmann’s experience was much greater, after trekking across the country with friends after graduating from the world’s only liberal arts university for the deaf and hard of hearing..

He fell in love with climbing, but was frustrated by the lack of resources available in his mother tongue, where he signed up for a training course, but the instructor told him that he would have to hire an interpreter and pay for it himself, and then get an interpreter to accompany him on every expedition, but instead, he resorted to YouTube, but most of the videos weren’t subtitled, or the auto captions weren’t good enough to follow.

Mostly, he said, he learned through trial and error, by watching and copying other climbers, and then taught Unger how to climb. cnn.

Typically, a couple uses an app big To translate voice into text to communicate with guides and other climbers, but the phone signal at high altitudes is weak. Even something as simple as typing is a challenge at 25,000 feet. They’ll have to take off their gloves to use the touchscreen, which can be risky in higher temperatures. This cold temperature.

Unger and Lyman decided to assume no technology would work on Everest and set out to learn to communicate as much as possible without it. Before the ascent, they hired a professional to learn some basics of American Sign Language and agree on the visual cues they could use. By the third week of climbing together, the couple and their guide were able You interact easily, without using an app or writing things down on paper.