{"id":225432,"date":"2025-09-14T05:51:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T05:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/225432\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T05:51:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T05:51:15","slug":"deaf-association-of-san-antonio-hosts-first-festival-in-over-a-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/225432\/","title":{"rendered":"Deaf Association of San Antonio hosts first festival in over a decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO<\/strong> \u2013 Joseph Lara, president of the Deaf Association of San Antonio, hosted the city\u2019s first Deaf Festival in years to bring his community together.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe originally started holding this festival back in the 1980s,\u201d Lara said. \u201cWe really wanted to do this for Deaf Awareness Month during the month of September.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Health Organization<\/a> estimates that about 430 million people are experiencing hearing loss worldwide. However, it\u2019s challenging to accurately track the number of deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals in Texas.<\/p>\n

In San Antonio, a community exists to help support those individuals. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to see more things happen more often that are accessible for all people, whether they\u2019re hearing or they\u2019re deaf,\u201d said Kristy Prado, a teacher at a deaf school.<\/p>\n

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders<\/a>, 1 in 8 people in the United States (13%, or 30 million) ages 12 or older has hearing loss in both ears, based on standard hearing examinations.<\/p>\n

Lara emphasized that there are many reasons for people who are hearing to attend events hosted by the deaf community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to emphasize that deaf people can really do anything, with the exception of hearing,\u201d Lara said. \u201cThey can drive. They can work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attendees had their own reasons for the Deaf Festival being important for them. Many of them are just grateful to be seen and part of something bigger than themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really important for me to come to this event because this was an opportunity for me to see all my friends, meet new people,\u201d Shannon Zarb-Cousin said. \u201cI was able to invite students to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zarb-Cousin is an ASL teacher at a local high school, where she prides herself on getting students immersed in the deaf community.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted the students to come and see for themselves, see that it\u2019s OK to come and talk with deaf people,\u201d Zarb-Cousin said. \u201cThis is a very loving and welcoming community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Deaf Association of San Antonio plans to make the Deaf Festival an annual event once again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really feel inspired to see this many people come out,\u201d Lara said.<\/p>\n

David Cisneros with Deaf Link, Inc.<\/a> interpreted the visual portion of this story in American Sign Language.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Joseph Lara, president of the Deaf Association of San Antonio, hosted the city\u2019s first Deaf…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":225433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,32900,407,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,26413],"class_list":{"0":"post-225432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-deaf","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-world-health-organization"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115201093381153653","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}