Deaf V CI's.

This is a misleading blog. Parents do not assume a CI is any cure.  Activism pursues this point because they oppose implantation.  It is obvious when a CI is implanted in many cases the defunct hearing part is removed for it.

We should listen to people that HAVE a CI, not those who don't and swallow any amount of fake news from deaf opponents of cochlear implantation, in many respects these same people oppose hearing aids too.    The sole 'positive' of staying deaf (And presumably being sign dependent), is for social reasons, all other areas are an issue.  There is no balance with deaf culture and they don't see a reason for inclusion.

They will demand it but only use certain aspects to improve for their own status quo, the last 20 years of awareness has hardly produced any advance in deaf inclusion at ALL.  ATR's last blog displayed the huge disadvantage of sign use in getting a job, the deaf need to address reality, as mainstream is never going to adapt to them, and after all, they are a MINORITY within the deaf and hearing loss area too, it just 'looks' like a bigger cultural area because of online use, step outside the door and experience the realities.

ALL parents want the give their child the best advantages they can, they aren't there to promote the 'joys of deafness', or to hurt own children.  Like a hearing aid, CI's are ASSISTS to hearing they have never been promoted as a cure.  We could suggest veiled suggestions parents are wrong or assisting discrimination against deaf signers, (Or as a few cases in the UK, parents being called child abusers by cultural deaf), is just going to encourage more CI take up and opponents interfering in parental rights.

The legal reality is unless YOU are the parent, you have no say at all.  Another reality (At least here in the UK), is that deaf charities support 40% of CI implanted children and young people, they know if they don't include they are done for and can be sued for discrimination and bias too.  Deaf need to be more accepting and inclusive themselves, and the old adage when in a hole to stop digging is still valid.

Why is deaf english so poor?

Why did the captions disappear 2 minutes into the vlog?  Deaf couldn't read them?!  Could explain why their English is so poor.

Jobs and the Deaf

Why would hearing employers need to recognise deaf culture in employment?  As I understand work you apply for a job you can do and communication issues are addressed prior to application, you don't go for a job and insist they need to be deaf aware, culturally aware, have to have a degree in deaf studies, and be signing as well, this has never been my experience.

Employers can pick and choose the best that apply for work with them, obviously, an applicant who can hear instructions and can get on with the job with less supervision are the people they want business isn't charity.  We could suggest deaf making demands on an employer BEFORE a job is offered is inviting rejection. As is putting that on a CV, and it doesn't help NOT putting that information on a CV as some obscure 'right'.  If employers aren't told they cannot be sued and they aren't discriminating.

Employers do NOT need to know deaf etiquette, about Milan/Paddy Ladd or Helen Keller, or indeed sign language, deaf applicants are so low a statistic the need is simply not there.  Last time the UK law enabled deaf and disabled was WW1/2 and the 1944 Act and was designed to get staff after most were conscripted.  After 1946/7 disabled and deaf were out again.   Late 1960s 1970s supported work was sold off.

It goes back to the reality ASL/BSL is negative in a job application unless deaf arts and charities is your bag, and using the 'support/empowerment' gig, (Whatever the buzz word is these days), is another negative.  Deaf need to display independence, a desire to mix, and to meet skill requirements, a willingness to adapt is essential, those people will be the successful applicants. We agree training is crap but cultural demands have made difficulties there too.

Simply firing discrimination claims and demands that have less to do with the job requirement and more to do with deaf activism,  at all and sundry is yet another negative.  Migrants who come to the UK adapt and learn the English language, they know they have few options if they don't.  I don't know of any deaf who has taken a job with an interpreter in tow or have been allowed to.  

They DO in the UK, get welfare support to a huge degree but hardly ANY Of that financial help or signed support, goes to assisting the deaf to integrate into the mainstream of employment.  We live in a hearing world so we all need to adapt to that, obviously on a social level we can please ourselves, but the world out there is NOT deaf oriented, we get with it or get left out of it.  The problem starts at day one, not with deafness but in equipping them to manage in the hearing environment.

There may be a deaf culture there is not a deaf employment area they can all go to.  Should they anyway? and deny deaf people choice.

Sign Life

TheSignLife from TheSignLife on Vimeo.

Global Sign

We are unsure where they get these facts from? Text has been the online leveller and in English mostly, not sign, because sign is localised to individual countries so does not 'travel' well. Uni sign is hardly understood by deaf people anywhere, it never caught on. The glaring fact they needed an interpreter to interpret the interpreter(!) seems ample proof this is propaganda and fake news to most of us.  BSL e.g. is an incomplete British signed language still seeking sufficient signs to make it an academic realism, the same appears for ASL albeit they are further along the line than the UK is and have a more realistic norm approach to it and don't allow regionalism to screw things up so much.  

The grammar of both, tends to let the deaf down being as it challenges the host countries norm, and recently ASL purists were demanding (a lot more honestly),  how 'foreign' it actually is, by demanding that status for ASL.  Perhaps there is more funding mileage in calling it foreign?  Why would you want to educate deaf in a language format nobody but them uses?  Its not as if deaf don't have options.

Having this admitted it is an issue in crossing language divides they continue that way?  Maybe they will one day explain how on earth any of it contributes to inclusion or access as currently, the promotion of BSL is via language rights not essential access requirements, and who supports deaf who don't sign?

Surely they aren't claiming 'spesial' is a bona fide spelling for deaf too?  Ooops....

Advanced Braille communication device.

The battle against the invisible.

In a world filled with sound – of the wind, the babbling brook, and rain for instance – those who suffer from severe hearing loss can sometimes feel they are living on a desert island, cut off from the sweet sounds of birdsong, or laughter. 

Masterton’s Pam Rangitaawa has been a hearing loss patient for more than 50 years. “I wasn’t born with a hearing impairment. When I was eight or nine months old, I had measles and scarlet fever – I was very, very sick.” “Back then, you had to be referred to a specialist by your doctor to get your hearing checked. “At kindy, they agreed with mum that I had a hearing loss, but the doctor wouldn’t refer me because he said my speech was too good.” 

She remembered in primary school “standing with my head in a corner because I hadn’t done as I was told”. Anne Greatbatch has been Rangitaawa’s hearing therapist for around 30 years. With Hearing Awareness Week here [until next Saturday], they want people newly diagnosed with hearing loss to know there is transitional support available and the old social stigma of being “deaf and dumb” is just that, a stigma. According to Greatbatch, Rangitaawa’s ability to speak fluidly is because for the first eight months of her life she could hear fine. It is arguable whether this had been a disadvantage or advantage throughout Rangitaawa’s life. “Dyslexia could be confused with a hearing loss and there’s all sorts of other types of hearing loss which I am lucky enough not to have,” Rangitaawa said. 

These days, hearing loss is no longer a mysterious problem that’s ambiguous to treat, but Greatbatch fears people still took their hearing for granted and often, by the time the problem was addressed, it was too late to do anything about it. At college, Rangitaawa was in the top class, “but I knew I was at a disadvantage because for me to learn in the classroom I had to concentrate and go home and work on what I had learned every day”. “I had to prepare myself so the knowledge would sink in – and you get so tired sometimes through concentrating because you’ve also got to watch people when they’re moving”, Rangitaawa said. Constantly aware of where she must sit in order to have a successful conversation, she has picked up techniques over the years to make the comprehension process easier. 

“For instance, you never sit facing a window because you can’t see the other person’s face properly.” Even the small interview room at the Wairarapa Times-Age, drapeless, and lit by fluorescent lights made her extremely uncomfortable. “Acoustics in a room for someone who’s wearing hearing aids – it closes in on you. “It’s not a comfortable feeling.”

SOURCE

Deaf Male survival

Deaf male survivor from Sean Geoghegan on Vimeo.

Trans case: I wasn't dissuaded enough.

A case in the UK where an individual who demanded a gender re-assignment is now suing the clinic who gave them what they wanted, suggesting as a teen they were never encouraged to listen to counselling and gave her puberty-blocking drugs which has ruined their life.   It is said assessments are being rights-driven not clinically diagnosed.

So should NOT have been listened to ? and should have undertaken more extensive counselling instead?  It was said gender altering drugs are being given to underage children which is illegal, as the age of consent in the UK is 16.  The drugs are not gender-specific either they are drugs used to castrate criminals.  

So gender identity areas are in flux, do they now oppose the human rights angle?  Clinics are happy to go to court then a proper directive can emerge.  Are teens too ready to go for gender reassignment because they are isolated or depressed?  Clinics welcome it, they can now proceed or not via a legal directive. Nurture not nature?   The medical profession too ready to agree without using intensive research first?  As puberty is a natural onset we all go through, and that born female can still bear children, should medicos step in and change that because someone is depressed?

A former transgender patient has mounted an unprecedented legal challenge against a sex change clinic she claims is putting children on a "torturous”, “permanent” and “unnecessary path, High Court documents reveal. 

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the UK's only gender identity development service (GIDS) for children, is being sued over concerns that youngsters are being given "experimental treatment" without adequate assessments. The landmark case centres around a bid to stop the NHS prescribing "experimental" puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children who wish to undergo gender reassignment.

The case is being brought by the former patient alongside a woman known only as Mrs A, the mother of a 15-year-old autistic girl who is currently on the waiting list for treatment at the service.

SOURCE

Colbert: I'm deaf in one ear.

And I don't hear with the other....

London: Supporting deaf unemployed.

CHINA: Health workers sign for Coronavirus victims.