The message it sends is “you’re so incapable that we need to hire another person just to make up for your deficiencies”. And if it becomes a norm across the corporate world, companies will become even more reluctant to hire deaf people if they know that they are getting one employee for the price of two.
It's my understanding the interpreter was requested. I don't think that's the message being sent here. The message would be more like "we comply with this reasonable and lawful request because it makes you, our valued employee of 6 years, even better at their job".
And you're not getting one employee for the price of two, you're getting one employee and a one assistant. Executives get assistants all the time and no one blinks an eye. What, are they so incapable of scheduling their days themselves?
The interpreter has a job already - it’s to interpret. If they wanted to be an Apple specialist I think they would have applied for that job. Interpreting and doing the job of an Apple specialist are not the same thing. It’s possible the interpreter would be a terrible Apple specialist.
Why not just hire an interpreter? It’s a win-win-win: a deaf person had a job, an interpreter has a job, deaf customers are better served, hearing customers are better served.
And to top it all off Apple still makes a ton of money! What does an interpreter really in the grand scheme of things when you’re a trillion dollar company like Apple? What’s the cost of an interpreter really to them? I get this idea that corporations are profit maximizing entities, but we’ve really taken it a bit far when we can’t pay a little extra for common decency even when record profits are coming in. Like, maybe if times were tough we’d have a different conversation, but Apple isn’t exactly hurting for cash here. We’re not even asking for decency, just to follow the law. They’ll bend over backwards to help out a thug like Putin when his lawyers send a takedown demand, but to do a solid for their deaf customers and employees… well they can’t be bothered.