and sight impaired manage during the pandemic.

This is the InsideEdition.com Coronavirus News

for May 7th, 2020.

David Cowan is the ASL interpreter for the State of Georgia

and he's attracted a legion of fans from around the world.

His full white beard reminds some people of Santa Claus

and his stylish, dark clothes stand out.

According to Cowan, it's easier to see his interpreting

against a dark background.

Fame aside, there are thousands of people

who rely on him for critical information.

- As an interpreter, I'm really not

used to being the one that people are watching

because we're very much in the background.

- [Reporter] Lauren Havard is an interpreter

for the City of Springfield in Missouri.

She says more people are noticing her work.

- I never want it to be about me,

so I'm always like, "Yep, thank you."

And I try to move on and just continue the appointment

or whatever the job that I'm in,

because I never want it to become more about me

than the people than I'm working with.

- [Reporter] She says the coronavirus

has created a new set of challenges for interpreters.

- In the beginning of these press conferences,

was these vocabulary terms related to coronavirus

were still getting established

and I had to kinda see what was being accepted

by the Deaf community.

- [Reporter] And she's mindful of the impact of her work.

- Interpreting an accurate message

is important all the time,

but it feels a little bit more high stakes

when you have however many thousands of people tuning in.

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- [Reporter] According to the World Health Organization,

5% of the world's population,

that's nearly half a billion people,

have disabling hearing loss.

In Belgium, volunteers sew face masks

with see-through mouths.

The masks help those with hearing loss to communicate

and to understand what others are saying.

- And our children need to communicate

with the whole entity, your face, the things you say.

Not also with the hands, but with the face,

the emotions behind the communication.

So when we were trying to wear these ones, we made these,

they could look at everything we were telling.

Even our emotions, the way we move our lips,

the way we move our whole face.

And they need it to understand

the way we communicate with them.

They need to see the whole picture,

not just moving from the hands and the sign language.

- [Reporter] Those who are sight impaired

face a different set of challenges during the pandemic.

Touch, so important to those who are visually impaired,

is now limited in this era of social distancing.

- Blind people are very tactile

and if they don't have a cane or they don't have a dog,

they have to hold on to a sighted human

and then their breaking the six foot rule.

- [Reporter] Erica Thomas in Florida

has had to make several adjustments.

For one, she can no longer go to the grocery store.

- At this time, with this quarantine,

I text my daughter my grocery list and she picks it up.

- [Reporter] Thomas also uses resources, such as counseling,

provided by groups like Lighthouse for the Blind,

to navigate the world.

- Once you become visually impaired,

it's a whole different mindset

and with that mindset you have to find a way

to overcome those barriers

and not allow those barriers to overcome you.

- Our total hospitalization rate is down again.

- [Reporter] New York governor, Andrew Cuomo,

has received high marks for his frank daily briefing,

but not everybody is giving Cuomo an A.

A group called Disability Rights New York

and four Deaf residents recently sued Cuomo

for not including an ASL interpreter

during his live briefings.

They say New York is the only state

that has never provided televised,

in-frame ASL interpretation of its COVID-19 briefings.

The governor's office said

that closed-captioning is provided,

but the suit replied that the closed-captioning

often contains errors and is not available live.

New York state is the epicenter of the coronavirus in the US

with more than 20,000 COVID-19 deaths.

There are nearly 3.8 million confirmed cases of COVID

and more than 260,000 deaths worldwide.

Now, Inside Edition's Jim Moret has the story

of a UPS man bringing light to his community.

- [Jim] Call him the most upbeat UPS driver in America.

- These customers of mine give me

a sense of pride and accomplishment.

- [Jim] For 20 years, Jeremy Squires

has been delivering packages in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,

but never like this.

- Our residential deliveries have completely blown up.

- [Jim] Now, in these scary times,

Jeremy is on a mission to deliver positivity,

profiling many of his customers on Facebook.

"Everyone should know Albert Hopper.

"Albert is a young age of 97.

"Al was the recipient of a purple heart.

"He is an American hero."

There's also Amelia.

"She reached out to me and asked

"if I could please stop by on my way home from work.

"We communicate through this little window."

- When I come up the door,

I'm bringing a little bit of normalcy

into some people's lives.

- [Jim] And here's a shout out to a neighborhood restaurant.

"Sabrina is still in the kitchen

"cooking for everybody during this pandemic."

Restaurant owner Sabrina Tan calls Jeremy

a burst of sunshine in these bleak times.

- He comes in very cheerful.

- By me going out there with a positive attitude

has a direct effect on everyone around me.

- [Reporter] For more on the coronavirus pandemic,

visit InsideEdition.com.

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