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The cochlear implant question

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Re: The cochlear implant question

#21

Post by mezzie2 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #3

> it is unarguable that only signed languages are easily accessible in all situations Even in the dark? Or at a distance? Or not facing the signer? Or with arthritis? Differently abled folks are entitled to their own culture and beliefs. Yet claims like that seem to be trying too hard to find a silver lining.

Or if you have to talk to a visually impaired person. My vision impairments are on the very mild end of the spectrum, but they're still enough to prevent any effective use of or learning of sign.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#22

Post by techsupporter »

throw894389 wrote: post #20
paulryanrogers wrote: post #3

> it is unarguable that only signed languages are easily accessible in all situations Even in the dark? Or at a distance? Or not facing the signer? Or with arthritis? Differently abled folks are entitled to their own culture and beliefs. Yet claims like that seem to be trying too hard to find a silver lining.

My deaf coworker does not even know sign language, she uses phone for everything. She lives perfectly normal life. Entire office is not going to learn new language, just to speak with an odd deaf person. And communicating specialized stuff like technical programming is not possible, gestures only cover basic words.

> And communicating specialized stuff like technical programming is not possible, gestures only cover basic words.

I want to gently push back on this. While sign languages do have signs for common, “basic” words (ASL has a lot of 1:1 mapped signs for English), sign languages are languages. They can, and do, express “specialized stuff”.

I have two coworkers who are deaf and they absolutely communicate specialized medical and technical concepts to each other and other people who use sign language. It’s amazing to watch them sign to each other, as someone who is only intermediate at ASL.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#23

Post by swalker326 »

I have two deaf daughters, both have cochlear implants and I’m very happy with the decision. My wife and I both learned sign, and let our kids wear or not wear their cochlear’s as they see fit. The youngest is too young to really understand but the oldest understands and almost exclusively selects to wear them. She is in main stream school but does spend time with her dhh friends. She 100% prefers to be with other dhh folks and sign, but likes being able to hear.

All in all the decision is yours to make and people can weigh in or tell you what to do. We got a lot of hate from Deaf community members for going down the road of implants, but we also got a lot of support. There are hatful people in all walks of life. Do what you think is best and love your kids.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#24

Post by sheepscreek »

I like this pragmatism because it sheds light on the realities of life. People live their experience in a muddy grey world, which is far less crystal than any activist would like to imagine. Activism thrives on polarizing individuals and circumstances, more so off-late. We could call it politicization. Either way, I believe that it’s more harmful than helpful. That polarizing the PoVs of individuals makes them more apathetic for those that hold different views.

The piece that was beautifully described by the author (paraphrasing) - “we can follow X while acknowledging that this isn’t how things should be, that it’s unfair - yet this is how the world is today”.

On a similar level, but less consequential for sure, being left handed creates an additional step/mental block for individuals in a world that mostly defaults to right-handedness. I consciously nudged my own child towards being more right-handed for this reason, because I didn’t want them to have this additional piece to process on top of the already complex life they were going to have by likely inheriting my ASD.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#25

Post by astura »

throw894389 wrote: post #20
paulryanrogers wrote: post #3

> it is unarguable that only signed languages are easily accessible in all situations Even in the dark? Or at a distance? Or not facing the signer? Or with arthritis? Differently abled folks are entitled to their own culture and beliefs. Yet claims like that seem to be trying too hard to find a silver lining.

My deaf coworker does not even know sign language, she uses phone for everything. She lives perfectly normal life. Entire office is not going to learn new language, just to speak with an odd deaf person. And communicating specialized stuff like technical programming is not possible, gestures only cover basic words.

>And communicating specialized stuff like technical programming is not possible, gestures only cover basic words.

This part just absolutely and categorically untrue.

I've personally witnessed people whiteboard code using only ASL on multiple different occasions.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#27

Post by Almondsetat »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #2

Saying this as someone who is hearing but close to the deaf community in college and knows ASL. By trying to give her the best of both worlds she is going to diminish both worlds. Not fully in the deaf community and not fully in the hearing community.

The hearing... community?

Re: The cochlear implant question

#28

Post by bkfunk »

dghughes wrote: post #26

I'd certainly urge someone to get a cochlear implant. Deafness and even being hard of hearing carries a known increased risk of dementia. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/want-to-reduce-your-risk...

This is a study of people in their 70s. The vast majority of people with hearing loss in their 70s lost it late in life; they have no Deaf/HH community, they almost never learn to sign, and they often struggle to adjust for their loss of hearing.

The study you linked talks about reduced stimulation, and in particular _social_ stimulation:

> when an individual suffers from moderate to severe hearing loss, they are less likely to participate in social activities. Perhaps they are embarrassed about their hearing loss. Or they may simply find it unrewarding to attend a social event when they cannot hear what is going on.

People who are born deaf/hh , or who lose their hearing early in life, if they are allowed to access and participate Deaf/HH communities and spaces, simply do not have any of these difficulties in social contexts within those communities.

Martha’s Vineyard had an unusually high rate of congenital deafness for centuries [1]. It became a place where everybody, deaf and hearing alike, used sign language regularly. In such a society, being deaf was not a significant impediment to participating in social society at all; I am aware of no evidence that would suggest the dementia rates would be higher for the deaf residents just because of their deafness.

A disability is only a disability in a given context; for some conditions (eg advanced ALS), they are disabling in almost all contexts, while for others (eg a food allergy), they are disabling in a relatively narrow set of contexts. The relationship to dementia is caused by the hearing loss mis-fitting the individual’s context; people with the same condition but different contexts would not be deprived of stimulation and therefore not susceptible to dementia in the same way.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha's_Vineyard?wprov=sfti1#... (Martha’s Vineyard sign language is a major source for what became American Sign Language. The other was French Sign Language, which is why British Sign Language and ASL are quite different despite sharing the same local spoken language)

Re: The cochlear implant question

#29

Post by mapt »

throw894389 wrote: post #20
paulryanrogers wrote: post #3

> it is unarguable that only signed languages are easily accessible in all situations Even in the dark? Or at a distance? Or not facing the signer? Or with arthritis? Differently abled folks are entitled to their own culture and beliefs. Yet claims like that seem to be trying too hard to find a silver lining.

My deaf coworker does not even know sign language, she uses phone for everything. She lives perfectly normal life. Entire office is not going to learn new language, just to speak with an odd deaf person. And communicating specialized stuff like technical programming is not possible, gestures only cover basic words.

"Not possible" is a vast overstatement.

We've negotiated imperial territory disputes and hired mercenaries on contract with pantomine. You get there eventually if you're motivated & creative. It's about how efficient using the language for that purpose is. If it lacks a lot of specialized jargon, that jargon needs to be unpacked into symbology that does exist in the language both people are trying to use.

With any language learning, you revert to more basic forms in a sort of puzzle of "How do I say that?" if you don't have a deep exposure to the vocabulary. An elementary learner might use twenty words of clarification to be certain of communicating meaning where an expert uses six.

With ASL, reverting to fingerspelling to bridge gaps in either person's vocabulary or in the existing corpus of well-known ASL vocabulary is also common.

But fingerspelling and using long strings of basic words is painfully slow compared to higher bandwidth formats. If two people speak two languages, they can just pick the one that has the best mutual SNR, which allows for the most concise effective communication. Sometimes, that's going to be written text typed into a phone instead of ASL, and sometimes it's going to be the other way around.

Re: The cochlear implant question

#30

Post by ibejoeb »

dghughes wrote: post #26

I'd certainly urge someone to get a cochlear implant. Deafness and even being hard of hearing carries a known increased risk of dementia. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/want-to-reduce-your-risk...

That study seems to have found that there is an association between dementia and concurrent vision and hearing impairment in elderly adults.
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