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Being deaf

davidpeter.me

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Re: Being deaf

#11

Post by bad_user »

rdl wrote: post #3

"The only good access service I’ve ever gotten is Cued Speech. In a basic sense, Cued Speech is a system that uses signs for sound. It was invented to battle the spectacularly low deaf literacy rate. (The average reading level of deaf 17- and 18-year-olds is at the fourth grade level.2) " Wow. That is seriously depressing. I can't even imagine being deaf and not reading a lot. (I actually don't think my life would be…

     I actually don't think my life would be seriously 
     negatively impacted by being deaf
I think you should reconsider your assumptions, because with any of the 5 senses gone, your life will be seriously impacted in a negative way, even more so for eye sight and hearing.

Some people can cope with such a disability, but only through tremendous effort. On deafness, that means you won't be able to participate in conversations the way normal people do, so you'll have to read lips and learn how to pronounce sounds by examining how other people move their mouth and tongue.

Many people with deafness since birth can't do that, preferring instead to stay close to other people that know sign language. Imagine how life is for them when they can't communicate with most people they meet.

Re: Being deaf

#12

Post by mechanical_fish »

I could try to find a deaf girl. However, I don’t want my kids to have an increased chance of deafness.

This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine.

Even if they come out hearing, we’d need to make sure they’re raised right — who will teach them how to talk?

Let me respectfully suggest that this is just untrue, a persistent myth about language learning. Hearing kids learn spoken language just fine, even if their parents don't use it. (Parents have a natural tendency to overemphasise the percentage of the time that their kids spend listening only to them. ;) But kids listen to everyone.)

One thing that does happen is that hearing kids of deaf parents become fluent in both ASL and a spoken language. Which is not a problem. It is in fact kind of awesome.

Re: Being deaf

#13

Post by jyothi »

citricsquid wrote: post #4

The way he talks about office communication and missing out on things reminds me very much of being a remote worker, I don't think I can begin to imagine how frustrating it would be to be in the office and feel like you weren't there. A few years ago there was a wonderful post on somethingawful.com from a deaf person who answered questions and talked about his life experiences, there was hours and hours of content to…

That is an excellent point you bring up there: remote workers are very close to being deaf. There are so many things you feel like expressing - small things not worthy of a call or an even an email - a chat works but still not the same effect.

Being a remote worker is like being both deaf and dumb.

I hope one day we would have the Cisco tele presence affordable in small offices too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQpBPUbNJcM&feature=fvwre...

Re: Being deaf

#14

Post by thunfischbrot »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #12

I could try to find a deaf girl. However, I don’t want my kids to have an increased chance of deafness. This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Even if they come out hearing, we’d need to make sure they’re raised right — who will teach them how to talk? Let me respectfully suggest that this is…

> This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation.

My thoughts exactly. Before I was forced to admit that I cuold use less technical terms when describing social or psychological phenomena ;)

Re: Being deaf

#15

Post by miyudreams »

rdl wrote: post #3

"The only good access service I’ve ever gotten is Cued Speech. In a basic sense, Cued Speech is a system that uses signs for sound. It was invented to battle the spectacularly low deaf literacy rate. (The average reading level of deaf 17- and 18-year-olds is at the fourth grade level.2) " Wow. That is seriously depressing. I can't even imagine being deaf and not reading a lot. (I actually don't think my life would be…

Easier said than done. You've never been deaf, so how would you know? Even if you try to imagine being in their footsteps, it's not the same. I definitely can't imagine myself living in complete silence. If you live in silence, the isolation will probably make any normal person depressed.

Re: Being deaf

#16

Post by miyudreams »

When you work in or travel to another country speaking another language that you don't know, it feels like you are really left out. Doing anything requires more effort. You feel lost and confused. Not understanding when your coworkers speak their language eventually becomes frustrating. Of course in this case, you're out for an adventure and new learning experiences, so it's not the same as actually be physically deaf.

Re: Being deaf

#17

Post by mudgemeister »

At risk of committing the eternal developer fallacy of attempting to fix cultural problems with technology: is there anything we, as a hacker community, can do to help?

As brother to a profoundly deaf sister (whose nerve-deafness and age make her ineligible for the cochlea implant), the most obvious opportunity is the poor accessibility of online video as you mentioned under "Screencasts, talks, and video tutorials". It seems that YouTube is making great progress in this area (c.f. http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about and the simplicity of the transcript format at http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...); is it just a case of contributing more transcripts and bringing this functionality to all video?

I vaguely remember some other efforts in this area, it'd be great if there was some painless way to transcribe arbitrary video (such as screencasts) and be able to wrap a player with caption support.

Re: Being deaf

#18

Post by thunfischbrot »

bad_user wrote: post #11
rdl wrote: post #3

"The only good access service I’ve ever gotten is Cued Speech. In a basic sense, Cued Speech is a system that uses signs for sound. It was invented to battle the spectacularly low deaf literacy rate. (The average reading level of deaf 17- and 18-year-olds is at the fourth grade level.2) " Wow. That is seriously depressing. I can't even imagine being deaf and not reading a lot. (I actually don't think my life would be…

I actually don't think my life would be seriously negatively impacted by being deaf I think you should reconsider your assumptions, because with any of the 5 senses gone, your life will be seriously impacted in a negative way, even more so for eye sight and hearing. Some people can cope with such a disability, but only through tremendous effort. On deafness, that means you won't be able to participate in conversation…

Sometimes I feel the same way, though I recognize that this is a kind of 80/20 rule as well. While I could do without about 80% of spoken word I hear everyday, missing the other 20% would really throw me off. And this is just the hearing part, not being able to express yourself would probably be even worse.

Viewed from afar it might not seem such a huge disadvantage, but I even stopped being a strict vegetarian because it can be such a hassle sometimes. In theory you can always find vegetarian alternatives, but it can be tiring to always have to explain yourself and go the extra mile. If cutting one group of foods out of my daily intake is too much for me to bear every day, how could I judge what losing speech and hearing would do to me?

Re: Being deaf

#19

Post by bad_user »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #12

I could try to find a deaf girl. However, I don’t want my kids to have an increased chance of deafness. This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Even if they come out hearing, we’d need to make sure they’re raised right — who will teach them how to talk? Let me respectfully suggest that this is…

     One thing that does happen is that hearing kids
     of deaf parents become fluent in both ASL and a 
     spoken language
This also happens inside families that migrated to another country. The parents do not speak the foreign language withing the walls of their own house (the foreign language being an inconvenience for them), but that doesn't stop the children from being very fluent in both languages from a very young age.

Re: Being deaf

#20

Post by [deleted] »

kevinchen wrote: post #6

Throughout this entire post, I kept coming back to one thought: when we build things, accessibility isn't just about adding ramps for wheelchairs.

[deleted]
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