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. Cross that bridge when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids were fine. Actually, you're right. Sometimes the girl I like is deaf, sometimes not. I should be fine with kids either way, and put in the work to make sure they develop right. I'm rethinking this entire paragraph. Perhaps I should have said I don't specifically sea…
Being deaf
101–110 of 161 posts
Re: Being deaf
#102I, too, am deaf, but our experiences are different. I was born deaf and am profoundly deaf with 85+ db loss in both ears. At the risk of sounding conceited, I'm what you would consider a success story.
A background:
As a child, I lived in San Diego, and my parents (at the advice of my speech therapist) enrolled me in a deaf school in Los Angeles that specialized in mainstreaming deaf students. I went there for 3 years and then joined a normal school in San Diego in 2nd grade wearing hearing aids.
At some point in time, I developed an ability to lip read and was able to speak without difficulty. This enabled me to have normal conversations with my hearing peers, and I was able to socialize.
So, trying to keep this short, I went through high school, went to college, received a cochlear implant (about 6 years ago), graduated from college with a degree in design, and I've actually worked with a number of companies in teams. I also met my wife (who is hearing) in college, and we've been together 10 years and married for almost 4.
I'm currently in my third week working as a lead designer for a YC startup in San Francisco, and it's a 6-member team. Great people, and there have been no issues as far as communication, and the team members here are very willing to accommodate any challenges I may have.
With that said, because lip reading requires me to intently watch people, I share your frustrations when it comes to conversations in an open office environment and in group conversations, but I found that one of the best ways to try to control that is to engage in conversation rather than be the 'fly on the wall'. I greatly rely on context when I lip read, so it's important to know what the context of the discussion is. It's actually much harder to lip read someone when you don't know what the context is.
Now, I have to say something - you said you use Cued Speech, and you sign. I believe that if you continued to do so, it would only frustrate you further. Furthermore, I'm surprised that you didn't make use of your speech therapy benefit, as that's probably the best way for you to overcome the difficulties you have. Learn how to lip read too - it's a fun party trick. :) Also, try to engage in normal conversations with your co-workers, no matter how challenging it might be. Practice is important. They will respect you for it. I completely understand the challenges of having a handicap and the challenges behind getting accommodation for your handicap, but I find that the best strategy is to ignore your handicap, overcome it, and come up with ways to accommodate yourself, not others.
If OP is David, you can contact me here on HN.
Re: Being deaf
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person who was raised with two different household languages at different times, I can offer anecdotal evidence that this holds true. My refugee parents decided that their native language (Romanian) would be an obstacle for me in their new country (Thailand) and went for English instead. Then we got asylum in Sweden and I learned Swedish in kindergarten and so on. In Sweden my parents started speaking Romanian a…
So you learned English from TV? I thought I've always heard that didn't work.
Re: Being deaf
#104Posts like this pain me. None of the hearing among us will ever truly understand what this is like. Posts such as this one give us a glimpse in to what it must be like, but that's all. There's no way we can understand the difficulties experienced day in and day out for the deaf. As a stutterer, I like to think that I understand a bit of what's it's like to not be able to communicate as well as some people. There's ti…
Re: Being deaf
#105"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…
Re: Being deaf
#106just trying to find positive sides in your uneasy life :)
I also bookmarked your github page, as there may be some funded work popping up in some future
Re: Being deaf
#107Warning: A long meandering post, about multiple things, because my day job is at a relay center, taking calls from/to deaf people. I absolutely understand his fear of letting a relay operator help him here. Now, obviously this fellow can write in English awesomely, and like any other place my coworkers are great people and (the vast majority are) trying to do their job well, so on paper you'd think it could work... B…
My phone (a Droid 3) has a TTY mode. Not sure what that entails though.
Re: Being deaf
#108Seeing what life is like from the techie side of the road as a deaf man is a great reminder to work more collaboratively with our colleagues whether they are deaf, or any other cool things that make them unique. e.g. English as a 2nd or 3rd language. etc.
Wishing you the best of luck.
Re: Being deaf
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use a directional mike aimed at roughly one's center of vision?
I feel like that cuts out some of the uses... perhaps you could us ML techniques to separate out different voices and then individually transcribe them? edit: wow this is a complicated problem now that I am thinking about it... the amount of processing the brain does...
Re: Being deaf
#110Beyond other deaf people, migrant knowledge workers will know best about what he is talking about when describing social relationships at work.