Do the Needs of Many Outweigh the Needs of a Few?
By Shane Feldman on Wed 26 Sep 2007 |
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On the surface, it may appear that there is a marginal difference between deaf and hard of people. Navel-gazing identity politics aside (including the white hot Oralism vs. ASL conflict which has little to do with this blog), the needs of these groups are different. Deaf signers who do not use assistive listening devices (i.e. hearing aids, cochlear implants, etc.) may not care whether or not there is a “loop” system in a room, and hard of hearing people who do not know American Sign Language (ASL) may not need ASL interpreters, and so it goes. Sure, many people fall in the gray area. They could be hard of hearing, wear cochlear implants, and be fluent in ASL or any other interesting combination. Regardless, people with hearing loss have specific needs in order to effectively communicate.
Hearing politicians often lump all people with “hearing loss” into a neatly compartmentalized category, or worse, with all “people with disabilities” or those who have “special needs”. This puts all people with a vested interest in any type of hearing loss in a position where they may collaborate to achieve somewhat dissimilar goals (loops for hard of hearing people and ASL interpreters for deaf signers, for example). However, scarce resources and a growing awareness of the difference between deaf and hard of hearing people can unravel well-intentioned efforts.
For example, a recent email from the Northern Virginia Resource Center announced that the Chicago O’Hare and Midway airports plan to install 11 videophones for the deaf or hard of hearing where users can request airport services and receive tourist information via VRS or call friends and relatives who have videophones. Great news, right? Well, one reader replied:
How is this going to help those who do not use sign language or even know it, and need to get services and information? Are those airports even aware that only a very small percentage of people with hearing loss will benefit from this service, while they ignore the rest?
That was an unfortunate response, it reeks of “we outnumber them, why give them this much attention and support?” And that is where the argument seems to be distilled at: numbers.
Some hard of hearing people, when seeking support from political leaders, argue that people with a hearing loss who do not use sign language vastly outnumber those who do. Their claim is true. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at the National Institutes of Health, there are 28 million people with hearing loss in the United States. The Maryland legislation for the ASL as a foreign credit bill (HB0586 Maryland ASL Bill) in 2005 stated:
ASL is used as the preferred means of communication for approximately 500,000 deaf individuals in the U.S. and Canada.
Is the sign language community really that small? Mike McConnell wrote an insightful blog on the number of deaf and hard of hearing people in the U.S., and estimates that the number could be 930,000 or even 1 million. Assuming that the signing population is on the higher-end of McConnell’s estimate, 1 million, that is only 3.5% of the entire population of people with a hearing loss in the United States. A drop in the bucket.
Consequently, the “we outnumber them” argument is gaining traction with more and more advocates in the hard of hearing community. Terry Portis, executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) — formerly known as Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH) — threw down the gauntlet in the July-August 2005 issue of Hearing Loss:
In spite of this [the miniscule number of signers in the U.S.], how much of state and federal dollars are used to support the communication choice of the vast majority of people whose lives are impacted by hearing loss? While it is difficult to come up with exact numbers, I would suggest that state and federal funding for supporting hearing loss is exactly opposite of what it should be. The statistics of people who are hard of hearing are used to justify funding that then usually never gets to them.
According to Portis, less than 3% of HLAA members use ASL, so he represents a specific, albeit enormous, segment of the deaf and hard of hearing community. Porits explains that most HLAA members rely on hearing technology and visual clues such as speechreading (or lip reading) to help them communicate. A brief glimpse of HLAA position papers reveal the organization’s priorities such as insurance coverage of hearing aids, telecoils, education of hard of hearing children in regular school, and assistive device warranty laws.
Unfortunately Portis neglects the fact that there is a continued alarming lack of access for deaf signers all over the country. While the funding may be disproportionate, the available amount still does not provide the deaf signer with the equal access protected under the law or with the opportunities that a U.S. citizen deserves. Arguing that a proportionate amount of resources should be diverted to a much larger number of individuals with hearing loss who do not know how to sign could make logical sense to political leaders. However, it overlooks the unequal amount of access and opportunities for both groups.
A profoundly deaf person who does not use his/her voice or lipread well could have a more difficult time finding meaningful employment compared to a hard of hearing person who has a good command of lip-reading and speaks almost normally. In another example, a deaf signer who does not use his/her voice that has been taken to the emergency room could have a harder time communicating with a doctor without an interpreter compared to a hard of hearing person. There are different degrees of inequality in these situations.
Portis concludes that “it is time that advocates for people who are hard of hearing start to make some noise about serious funding inequities that are found throughout the country” and some have taken up his charge. Put another way, the tables have been turned for the signing deaf community. It is also possible that hard of hearing people who desire to become integrated into the hearing world with minimal barriers have ramped up their advocacy efforts while signers, more content among their own, may not feel as compelled to correct inequities. A larger population with a stronger desire to become part of the hearing world can easily overshadow the signing community. But that should not be the case.
The solution isn’t to transfer funds from one group to another or even to compare the amount of funding. Both groups should endeavor to create more funding for both, signers and hard of hearing people. There is no fixed amount of the funding pie that will be split between both groups of people with hearing loss that we must squabble over. Instead of taking $1 away from signers and giving it to hard of hearing people, both should be increased by $1. Together, we should seek equal access for both groups, even if the other is not present. So if a signing person is advocating for greater services for signers, they could also do the same for hard of hearing people, and vice versa. After all, we both understand the difficulty of being denied communication access, don’t we?
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What these hard of hearing people forget (or overlook) is a very simple fact: inequalities exist in all disability groups.
For example, when I worked at Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, I was faced with the difficulty of deciding what color, matte/shiny, etc to use for large print signs. Apparently, a certain type of low-vision user likes to see blue letters against a matte yellow background, while another certain type of low-vision user likes to see black letters against shiny white background. The idea here is low contrast vs. high contrast. Ugh. How to decide? Pick one, or pick both and risk drowning Kennedy Center with signs?
Another problem we faced was…strobe lights are popular as visual fire alarm systems, but they are equally bad for epileptics, who react badly to strobe lights (they have seizures when they see strobe lights). Which is more important–informing deaf people that there is smoke/fire, or making sure epileptics don’t have seizures?
It goes on and on.
At the risk of outlawing strobe alarms for deaf people entirely, the point about strobes aggravating epilepsy is valid.
Shouldn’t there be research to see if lowering the frequency of strobing will eliminate this problem? 1 flash per 2 seconds versus a rapid strobe of 3 flashes per second, for example.
Another concern is that HoH groups competing for funds for assistive devices and services could cause Deaf people to experience reduction in services. Government budgets being limited, the principle of the greater good is followed in most cases. Again, research is needed to determine what kinds of assistance is universally needed by all groups–whether it be running captions, visual display screens, universal telephones containing both VP and TTY and hearing aids, or elimination of loudspeakers in favor of universal access devices.
Not only the frequency but the color as well that can induce seizures. In Japan, a Japanese commercial had this wild, intense red and yellow strobe effect flashing has caused a lot of Japanese kids go into an induced seizure because of that. Though it’s a combined effect but frequency of flashes is what mostly gives many people seizure problems.
Even the color of the new kind of headlights seen on some of the newer cars nowaday (almost like a whitish/blueish ting color) can cause slight nauseau in some drivers when the oncoming lights are shone into the eyes.
Dianrez, the epileptic groups told us that the number of flashes doesn’t matter. The color of flashes doesn’t matter. All it takes is one flash for some epileptics, and two flashes for some others, etc. The level of sensitivity among epileptics varies.
The point is, at one point the epileptic groups did their best to prevent widespread installation (via advocacy/legislation) of strobe fire alarms in hotels, public places, etc. Fortunately for Deaf people, they failed. But every now and then when this issue comes up, they try to make waves again.
Flashing rate does matter. It’s what triggers some of the epileptic episode. Not just flashing but other things as color, distance, patterns invovled, etc…
http://www.epilepsyfoundation......060306.cfm
Michele, “fortunately for deaf people, they failed”? I feel uncomfortable being fortunate in expense of other people. Is strobe light the only solution for deaf people? What about bright red light that doesn’t flash? What do you think?
Agreed… Even a sign that says FIRE would be pretty useful in places where we wouldn’t be asleep…
Ben, I was speaking as a Deaf person, obviously.
In all seriousness, if I was responsible for ensuring installation of strobe fire alarms in hotels (for example), I would set aside one or two rooms without strobe fire alarms, and through advertising, let epileptics know that they can request strobe fire alarm-less room.
The problem is in *other* public areas such as schools, airports, museums, etc…steady, non-flashing light wouldn’t work because a Deaf person could think it’s just a regular light. You do need the flash to signal to the Deaf person/people that something is wrong and that they need to get out.
The strobe itself could be switched to a light bulb…(flashing, of course).
This is a good thread. Do deaf people get priority over people with light-triggered epilepsy? I think not, the principle of universal access and universal accommodation should apply. If something will satisfy both groups, that should apply. A box sign reading “EVACUATE” could glow on and remain on while a moving band in the background going back and forth calls attention to it. All things are possible if one takes the time to think things through. Most ADA compliant features I have seen weren’t well thought out.
Dianrez,
Good response. What ADA compliant features, that were not well thought out, come to mind?
We’ve all seen the ramps with a step before them. In toilet stalls for the handicapped, toilet paper dispensers are below the level of the toilet. Subways that have gates beside the turnstiles for wheelchairs require the wheelchair to back up after opening the gate. Many displays are hearing aid/loop compatible but not closed captioned. The stupid, not thought-out examples are there if one looks.
I agree that most ‘compliance’ only goes so far, and much of the failure of compliance efforts is due to unthoughtful installation–or what we used to call lack of common sense. Even a lot of non-disability-focused things suffer from poor design. Many times, the well thought out stuff for disabilities ends up being the preferred choice of those without disabilities.
Like I said to Ben, a non-flashing light is so easy to overlook, especially if you are a heavy sleeper, or you are busy doing something or you just came in, unaware that the fire alarm has just gone off.
No, I think flashing light of some kind is necessary to ensure that you get ALL Deaf people’s attention.
In this case, universal accommodation is almost impossible, given that epileptics are saying that they don’t want flashing lights of any kind and obviously, Deaf people *need* flashing lights to ensure that all Deaf people don’t accidentally get killed in a fire simply because they didn’t realize that the fire alarm light was on!
I simply don’t know why there can’t be an alternative to the flashing light problem. One of the federal agencies here in Washington, D.C., use a text-messaging alert system to let deaf employees know when there is a fire drill, or an evacuation drill. It’s simple, and could be implemented with no cost at all since most deaf people carry some form of pagers, i.e. Sidekicks and Blackberries, with them.
All they have to do is sign up to that specific hotel’s e-mail alert system or an airport alert system.
Noelle, when I worked at Kennedy Center, we had this deaf custodian who wasn’t well educated. We tried a text pager for him since his job took him all over Kennedy Center and we were afraid he wouldn’t be able to see the flashing fire alarm.
Well…because he wasn’t well educated, he didn’t know how to use a pager and despite repeated attempts to train him on how to use a pager (I trained him many, many times, as well as many attempts made by another Deaf co-worker to train him, plus his hearing boss tried to train him many times, etc.), it just didn’t work that well for him.
We had to give up on pager idea for this guy and resort to using buddy system to alert him to fire alarms if he was working in an area without a visual fire alarm.
Sometimes pagers don’t work well, especially for low-functioning deaf people.
Accessibility is a complex issue, trust me.
I am aware that accessibility is a highly complex issue. That is why I want the deaf community to work together in making sure that MOST or nearly ALL deaf members are covered in terms of access and emergency preparedness.
Text messaging would cover nearly all deaf people, but for the few low-functioning deaf people, the buddy system would have to work.
Noelle, *sigh*. What about public places, such as museums, airports, etc?
You have to take in the possibility that a low-functioning deaf person might be alone.
Can’t assume that such a person will always have someone with her/him.
We can’t absolutely cover everyone in this instance. There will always be the extreme few that cannot utilize the kind of technology used by the deaf community. I know that there are deaf children with severe multiple disabilities. I know they can’t benefit from CART because they can’t read the text, I know they can’t benefit from ASL interpreters because they can’t see the interpreter due to their blindness, I know they can’t move about freely due to their paralysis, I know they can’t function cognitively in classrooms or go to college due to their severe mental impairments.
HOWEVER, these deaf people represent a very small percent of deaf society. We should make every good effort to include them in accessibility coverage, but if our efforts fail, it is not for the lack of trying, it is because their difficulties are so profound that it cannot be addressed conclusively.
The best accomodation for those we label “low functioning deaf people” is the erradication of the educational discrepencies that create them in the first place.
Exactly. What if they’re born with mild mental retardation? What if they’re dyslexic? What if they’re born to parents that don’t speak English or ASL, such as Hispanic parents or Chinese parents with no knowledge of how to deal with their child’s disability. What if that low-functioning deaf person has multiple disabilities?
Oh, that’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking of all the people who are just deaf but never acquired language of any kind because they were ignored or put in an inappropriate environment.
That’s right, Chris. None of these happened merely because of children’s inability to hear. Lack of access and exposure to rich language by visual means are what contributed to most of their low functioning status.
Michele, I empathize with your experience. If any option you have always has its ‘deal-killer’, then choosing is always going to be frustrating. I’m a hearing aid fitter, and realistically, even the best of hearing aids can’t compare to normal audition. No two brains are a like. We look for aural patterns and have strategies for dealing with those patterns….but the list of possibilities is pretty huge when you try to get specific for one person’s needs and wants.
If we are trying to improve accessibility, the least we can do is stop putting barriers up on the paths that lead in the right directions.
Another reason why I would support the idea of a “Million deaf People March” (I purposely used lower case to include all people with hearing loss and not just only about special interest group only). Or unless somebody has a better slogan to include ALL people with hearing loss for the million march idea. There are 30 million people in the U.S. with hearing loss, so the idea merits a possibility of that working successfully.
All of us have various communication needs regardless of our preferred mode of communication whenever we are in public places, at work, at home, at a sporting event and so on. For people seeing a million plus people with hearing loss marching in the streets of D.C. could even actually galvanize more people into addressing our communication needs. Congress, the industry, and services could in fact re-think on just how big of an economic impact we all carry and that we’re not to be taken lightly.
Well, the large majority of 30 million people with hearing loss would dare not to identify themselves as “Deaf”. So what to do??
We all share one common need and that is we have communication needs whether it’s in the form of CC, signing, use of hearing aids, SEE, cued speech, AVT, and so on and so forth. That’s the common link we all have.
Robert does have a point…there are many, many “hearing” people with degrees of loss that don’t self-identify themselves as “HOH”, “person with hearing loss”, etc.
I.e., many “hearing” senior citizens don’t even consider themselves in the hearing impaired category and wouldn’t care less about the issues deaf people have.
Man, this is a tough issue like Ketcham mentions above..you can’t please everyone.
I do agree on a joint fund raising concept where both (or all) segments get more $$$ instead of the $$$ going from one group to another.
J.J.,
Let’s assume that a government informs “hearing loss” groups that they have $100,000 earmarked for deaf and hard of hearing needs. Both most likely have ideas in mind that exceed that amount. In that case, what happens?
Shane, I am actually surprised (and offended) that SHHH would complain. After all, it is general knowledge that SHHH and AG Bell organizations are very well-funded, unlike NAD.
The difference is, NAD is much more active (and successful) in area of legislative advocacy than SHHH and AG Bell.
If SHHH and AG Bell feel that NAD (and culturally Deaf people) are being heard more, that’s their own fault for not being more active in area of legislative advocacy.
Now to answer your theoretical question: obviously each group would get a slice of that $100K…and it would be terribly small, given that we have cultural Deaf group, HOH group, oral Deaf group, CI group, Cued speech group, blah blah blah.
Could say “take this slice and be happy you got it.”
That’s why I’m advocating communication access as a point we all can rally around. The atrocious HDTV captioning is one example and affects ALL deaf people.
For instance, reasonable accomodations—that’s something we need to rail against because the ADA has been so narrowly interpreted that a reasonable accomodation for me is an ASL interpreter that I cannot benefit from as an oral deaf person with a CI. I had to fight to get CART at my college. CART was not considered a reasonable accomodation because the school wasn’t aware that there were different segments of the deaf population that required highly specific accomodations.
What atrocious HDTV captioning problem? Please enlighten me more on this.
Here are links for you which explains the problem with digital captioning in great detail:
http://coataccess.civicspaceondemand.org/node/41
http://www.hearinglossweb.com/.....tv/fcc.htm
Thanks!
Shame on you, Shane Feldman, for repeating the oppressive phrase “navel-gazing identity politics.”
YOU are doing the exact same thing that Jordan attempted to do, which is attempt to label pro-Deaf culture activism as an unimportant internal issue.
But it is NOT an unimportant internal issue. It’s an extremely important external political issue that is very important to the future of deaf education.
I agree with the statement about “navel-gazing identity politics.” Too much heat and light has been expended on who is more Deaf than thou. Shane points out a far more productive approach than protesting those who are different from your ideal.
About time somebody said something about it. I agree.
It has NOTHING to do with “who is more deaf than thou”. That is oppressive language which attempts to deflect attention away from the real issues.
The real issues are that deaf children NEED ASL in order to develop normal cognitive skills.
STOP trying to re-frame the issue in an oppressive manner.
Deep Ears,
Identity politics is not unimportant, but using it to oppress others does not seem to help us move forward. Some comments in this blog are good examples of that. I’m sorry you do not feel that the issue I brought up is a “real” one.
Shane,
You are attempting to reframe my comment. I am saying that when you use the phrase “navel gazing”, you are implying that Deaf culture activism is unimportant, because it is some kind of internal issue that doesn’t address important external issues. “Navel gazing,” in this instance, is a bigoted, anti-Deaf culture term.
Now you are attempting to reframe the issue of Deaf culture activism by portraying it as an issue of oppression against hard-of-hearing people. That’s a very narrow and improper frame you are attempting to create.
Everybody knows that if a hard-of-hearing person has a good attitude and accepts others as equals, then he or she will also be accepted as an equal. This is how Deaf culture grows and prospers.
Your statements expose the sterility and futility of identity politics by mindlessly spouting off cliches about “bigoted, anti-Deaf culture,” and “good attitudes.”
I don’t necessarily disagree with your goals, but I do object to your intemperate language and attempt to impose your ideological blinders on everyone else.
To me, the real heroes are those who create opportunities and solutions by working with those who are the polar opposites, without preconceived notions. The real heroes provide a better place for D/deaf people to get better opportunities in light of the almost continuous discrimination we face. It’s hard work, yes, but more progress is made than spouting off slogans.
DE, did you read the same blog article as I did?
From what I read, the HoH people are telling the hearing to not pay any mind to the signing deaf, because our population isn’t as big as theirs.
Go back and read it!
And by the way, Shane has every right to say what he thinks about the verbal vomitage about deaf identity politics. I for one, agree with Shane, and am FED UP with people trying to tell me what my identity should be, and trying to think for me.
Deep Ears:
“Everybody knows that if a hard-of-hearing person has a good attitude and accepts others as equals, then he or she will also be accepted as an equal. This is how Deaf culture grows and prospers.”
That is not true, and pretty much everyone else confirms it with their comments in one form or another. A hard-of-hearing person may have a good attitude towards the D/deaf community and willing to accept them as “equals”, but may not know ASL. That person gets lamblasted and put down so many times by some Deaf people that s/he is left with a bitter impression of the “deaf culture.”
So deaf culture grows and prospers… at the expense of some people.
Deep Ears,
I am sorry. I am in the same boat as Vikki, DP, Anonymous and others. Do you know me well and represent me?
The person who started the intemperate language was Shane, when he used the phrase “navel gazing identity politics.” This is an attack, in the style of King Jordan, in the attempt to marginalize the validity of ASL and Deaf culture.
Anonymous: the whole purpose of Deaf culture is to achieve those exact goals that you mention, so you are attempting to turn the world inside out, and also marginalize Deaf culture in a similar manner.
Refusal to learn a language, yet stubbornly asserting a right to partake in a culture, is a sign of superiority. Any hard-of-hearing person who wants to be treated as an equal and accepts culturally Deaf people as equals would therefore learn ASL.
http://www.neowin.net/forum/fun/trolls.gif
But there ARE culturally Deaf people who do not know ASL. Yet they take pride in the culture.
So using your reasoning, in order for me, as a Black woman, to participate equally in my Black> culture, does that mean I must resort to speaking ebonics? I don’t think so.
Au contraire, I think it is you who is marginalizing ASL and Deaf Culture by your strident language and demands that everyone follow your ideal community.
Keep up the “good” work and you’ll rapidly find yourself marginalized into obscurity.
And rightfully so.
Why can’t we accept culturally deaf people that do not know ASL into the deaf community? I consider myself culturally deaf—for instance, I went to a residential school, have deaf friends who are mostly oral, and I understand the difficulties of being deaf in a largely hearing environment.
Refusal to learn language? – Hmmm, there are many choices people can make in this world – English, French, ASL, LSF and etc. It’s a matter of respect. Where’s your respect?
What are you talking about in terms of respect?
Noelle, WAD is talking about Deep Ear’s lack of respect.
I’m talking about people who have superiority complexes who want to have it both ways. They want to be accepted within Deaf culture, but they also want to assert a superiority due to their ability to speak.
You can’t do that. THAT is the lack of respect and THAT is why some hard of hearing people feel rejected. The truth is that that type of person rejected culturally Deaf people first.
I have a right to be impolite on this thread where Shane Feldman is attacking culturally Deaf people by using the phrase “navel gazing identity politics.” That is King Jordan’s trick and Shane is attempting to do it here. It’s the attempt to marginalize Deaf culture by portraying it as involving meaningless “navel gazing.”
Nobody is demanding that people join Deaf culture, but if you do, you do it as an equal, not someone with a superiority complex.
DE, I don’t like the term “navel gazing” either, nor do I like the attempted marginalization of Deaf Culture that often occurs in many of these discussions. But I’m sorry, I personally don’t equate the use of speaking ability with having a superiority complex. I DO see a line that can be crossed in which the deaf person doing the speaking is rubbing it in the non-speaking Deaf/deaf person’s face, and I think an emphasis should definitely be placed on not crossing that line. And I’ll even go one step further and say it’s POSSIBLE for a deaf person who can speak to develop an attitude of superiority about it.
But it doesn’t necessarily follow that such an attitude MUST develop, and to say that if a person wants to belong to Deaf Culture he or she can’t speak at all in any circumstances… that strikes me as being just as oppressive as teachers and parents who never allow deaf kids to sign.
I don’t know… are there ANY instances in which a deaf person’s speaking doesn’t betray the culture?
“I don’t know… are there ANY instances in which a deaf person’s speaking doesn’t betray the culture?”
I’m sure I can think of many instances where speaking doesn’t “betray the culture,” but I’m fascinated by someone who thinks that a Deaf person speaking somehow oppresses the non-speaking Deaf person.
I think that says more about Deep Ears than Deaf Culture and the Deaf community, which brings me to the point — Deep Ears doesn’t speak for you, me, or anyone else in Deaf Culture or the Deaf community.
Oh, I can easily see instances where the decision (on a Deaf/deaf person’s part) can be oppressive to a non-speaking D/deaf person, especially if there’s no signing. Many non-speaking D/deaf people have told me that they loathe having ANYONE speak “for” them unless that person is a paid interpreter repeating exactly what the non-speaking D/deaf person said. A lot of people just barge in and speak for them anyway, and sadly it doesn’t take only a hearing person to do that. It just takes a speaking person. So yes, it can be oppressive.
Chris,
I did not want to equate the use of speaking ability with having a superiority complex, but I was simply referring to some people who want to join Deaf culture, while at the same time they view culturally deaf people as being inferior to themselves.
Then they complain because they feel rejected. That’s the irony. And they accuse culturally deaf people of being exclusive.
Deep Ears:
Wow, I am impressed with all of your posts. You have nailed them and these are what contributed to the problems I have witnessed where culturally Deaf and Deaf culture become a scapegoat.
Hello Deep Ears (sorry I didn’t your post until Katherine replied to it):
I understand what you mean. I can’t speak for how everyone feels but I DEFINITELY don’t see Deaf Culture as inferior to ANYONE, myself included. I just see it as… there, I guess, both as inclusive and exclusive as it is, depending on the individuals who emobody its values.
I don’t see oralism as superior either, nor the Hearing. Same thing in both cases. They’re just “there.”
(Sorry I meant “didn’t SEE…” argh… long day…)
Ideological purity is frequently the enemy of progress.
Read it, learn it, understand it, and then get back to me.
Anonymous, no offense, but that kind of scares me. Let’s take the issue of ASL in the classroom (bilingualism in the classroom, actually… ASL and English).
Do I not support SIMCOM in the classroom because of “ideological purity” of some sort? No. I don’t support SIMCOM because I honestly believe it does much to screw up the language-learning abilities of deaf children.
It’s one issue among many where taking a stand can get one accused of what you’re talking about, yet I wasn’t born deaf, didn’t learn ASL as my first language, have used hearing aids (and still do from time to time), have many connections with hearing people, etc.
Not everything is about ideology or purity for ideology’s sake. Many things that we need to address are quite practical.
Just saying…
A bone to pick, but first some facts (I’m not sure if the table is going to copy over but let’s see):
“Have hearing problems”
(includes both deaf and hard of hearing)
Total U.S. population:
235,688,000 20,295,000 8.6%
Children (ages 3-17):
53,327,000 968,000 1.8%
Ages 18-34:
67,414,000 2,309,000 3.4%
Ages 35-44:
38,019,000 2,380,000 6.3%
Ages 45-54:
25,668,000 2,634,000 10.3%
Ages 55-64:
21,217,000 3,275,000 15.4%
Ages 65 and over:
30,043,000 8,729,000 29.1%
(Source: http://library.gallaudet.edu/d.....s-us.shtml)
One thing that irritates me to no end is that the type of argument Shane is talking about is based on the fact (albeit probably unknowningly even to those making the argument) that the vast majority of people who lose/have lost their hearing are aged 65 and over… with the next biggest category being people who are approaching that age. In fact the younger you get, the smaller the numbers are.
Yet when you need the most help and the most support is when you’re young. Because a person who loses his hearing to old age has most likely acquired a language (and has most likely probably had a career and is now in retirement, as opposed to a deaf high school graduate who has a good chance of being neither well-educated nor in a good position to find a job… due to discrimination and other factors).
If you want to talk about funds going to the biggest groups, fine, let’s just ship all the dough off to senior citizens in nursing homes. How much do you really think you have in common with them? Are we in the same political boat, with the same types of problems? Probably not.
I agree with Shane’s post… it should not be the case that we should transfer funds from one group to another. That would be catastrophic in my opinion, especially if you start transferring funds away from the younger age groups.
We need better solutions… and I think a good one would be for us to stop fighting each other.
Yes, but baby boomers, those in their 50s, are losing their hearing. They’re still in their careers and are quite involved in their communities. They should be reached out to in terms of gaining support for communication access.
I think that communication access is an issue that the Deaf and the hard-of-hearing and oral communities can rally around because having equal access to communication benefits everyone.
Also, to go slightly off topic, on the issue of Deaf v. hard-of-hearing, I’ve always been irritated whenever people ask me if I sign, because I don’t like that assumption that just because I’m deaf means that I know sign language, which I don’t. It’s the same sort of irritation a third-generation Hispanic feels when he or she is asked if s/he knows Spanish.
For instance, my college that I went to was not familiar with CART or remote captioning at all, what they were familiar with was ASL interpreters and note-takers. They had an ASL interpreter on staff. When I came to college and asked for CART, I had to explain to the disability office that I couldn’t benefit from the ASL interpreter, and that I needed CART to function in my classes. They ended up giving me CART, the remote CART kind, which I really liked because there wasn’t the physical presence of the captioner in the classroom.
There was another deaf girl on campus, and she ended up using the ASL interpreter. I wondered why she didn’t use CART instead. CART provides almost a verbatim transcription of what is said by the professor, and I was able to save the transcripts to my laptop to look at later. I didn’t even have to take notes, which allowed me to participate more in the classroom.
I get irritated too, when people ask me if I lip-read. :P
Noelle, I understand what you mean but in all fairness even *I* would ask you if you could sign (if I noticed or figured out somehow that you were deaf upon first seeing you). But that isn’t a judgment thing on my part, it’s a communication facilitation thing. If you don’t sign, cool, that means we gotta write or type on my pager or your cell or something because I can’t lipread all that well. So it’s just a question of figuring out what we CAN do. Otherwise how else would I know?
But yeah I guess some people do judge others for how they communicate. It’s not just signers doing that to non-signers, though…
Expanding on that, I never really get all that upset when people ask me if I can talk, for the same reasons. But for some reason it does bug me when they say “Wow you talk well for a deaf person.”
I don’t know… the former seems to be about gathering information and the latter seems to be about… classifying?
(PS “classifying” isn’t quite the right word… let me think on that a bit…)
Yes, but it’s a constant question that I face from hearing people, and I get tired of it.
I understand your frustration when they compliment you on talking well for a deaf person. It’s sort of like telling black people that they’re very articulate or have good grammar.
Yes, exactly that. Smells the same as “You’re a credit to your race.”
That statement, “you’re a credit to your race,” annoys me as well, but it is taken from the African-American community.
We have a lot more commonalities with the African-American community than differences in terms of our interactions with the majority culture. For example, the philosophical (and cultural) differences between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois is easily reflected in the Oralism vs. ASL debate, plus all the other differences pulling at us.
Chris, when you said: “But for some reason it does bug me when they say “Wow you talk well for a deaf person.”
It’s no wonder it bugs you because when a hearing person says that, s/he is praising YOU for your success in meeting the hearing standard of speech quality.
Additionally, that hearing person is telling you that you have succeeded in working with the hearing system by using speech well enough for them to approve & accept you.
Lastly, it is audistic as well. I trust I need not to explain that.
Michele, you don’t need to explain it, no. But I’d like to debate you on something here, and before I can do that I need some information that might be personal… so I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer…
…but were you born deaf? To a deaf family? Went to a residental institution? ASL was your first language? If you could answer those four things it’d help me out…
“Audistic”? I’d consider that statement to be condescending.