As a hacker my first thought after reading this is that how the improvement of speech recognition technology combined with something like google glasses could help deaf people.
Being deaf
21–30 of 161 posts
Re: Being deaf
#22 Thanks for sharing your story! It takes true guts to write about your true feelings.
off-topic: You have one of the coolest facebook usernames. Completely stumped me for a while!
Re: Being deaf
#23"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.
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Re: Being deaf
#24I 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 search for a girl who is deaf, and then just left it at that, or just removed it entirely. Love is love.
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.
Some (old) studies had suggested otherwise, but you made me remember the bilingualism argument, which is gaining traction. I do know that if you have a hearing child to both deaf parents, it's very important to expose the child to spoken language as much as possible. Of course, I hope I'm that kind of parent :-)
Bilingual kids do have a lot of advantages over kids who only know one language. I'd be very happy to teach my child, hearing or deaf, both sign and English.
Thanks for the insightful comment.
Re: Being deaf
#25Great article. OP - If it helps, I also have a minor physical disability. I can't type properly with one hand (congenital defect, although its impacting aesthetics more when compared to motor functions) yet I'm working as an engineer for few years. And now I'm part of founding team at a startup. It never acted as an impediment in my life or career. I generally don't mention about it (to anyone) because I feel I get unwanted sympathies and awkward looks. As I'm perfectly normal like otherwise.
Don't worry about hearing disability. It will only affect you if only you think so. And there will be some times you'll feel lonely and depressed (like after your bowling alley incident) because you are not part of the norm. Always remember, despite all the odds you are doing amazing (compared to others). So use that as an inspiration. That said, I would like to wish your well in you career.
P.S. This is the first time I'm talking about it in public forum (in my entire life). So I'm inspired from your post :-)
Re: Being deaf
#26What is the potential for technology to help, some sort of combination of Google glasses and siri?
Re: Being deaf
#27"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
The irrational optimism on this site is starting to get a bit carried away.
Re: Being deaf
#28ASL was my foreign language in college. I wish I remembered it better, frankly. It's definitely got to be difficult to translate technological jargon and neologisms into ASL, much less math, where your instruction is likely highly symbolic. Probably the best you would get would be to get a lot of fingerspelling if the person doesn't understand the subject... I can definitely see how Cued Speech would work better for you. Frankly real time translation into ASL has some big difficulties because of major grammatical differences, not to mention that a fast gesture can differ in meaning from a slower one. And that's assuming they were actually using ASL for the translation, instead of some sort of pidgin.
Anyway I think one of the important differences between most IM/chat and and speech is that speech is spontaneous and instant because it's serial and unbuffered. I think the closest you get in chat is Google wave, where you didn't hit enter, you typed and each letter showed up on the screen. I do wonder if even bad speech recognition, if it was real time, might not help with conversations. I really wish other IM services used real time typing, instead of requiring people to hit enter or send.
Also don't assume your alone. There are probably quite a few deaf hackers, and collaboration might help bring resources like subtitled or transcribed videos to light.
Anyway, I appreciate the insight. Keep kicking ass.
Re: Being deaf
#29The 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…
The presence of remote workers in a team greatly enhances written communications - take most open source projects for example : for lack of frequent oral interaction they are heavy on forums, mailing lists, bug trackers, wikis etc. I guess that the presence of deaf people in a team might provide the same challenges and produce similar effects. But I'm not sure that deaf people want to be treated entirely like remote workers : as the article shows, the need for social life must be taken into account too.
Re: Being deaf
#30I know I'm echoing everyone, but this story was just so profound I have nothing to say. It's very rare to wake up in the morning, go on hackernews and find something this worthy of attention.
You almost made me forget to eat breakfast. Thanks for the great read and I'm glad to hear things are looking up for you.
Here's to hoping three years from now look as better than today, as today does compared to three years ago :)
PS: to startup founders hiring foreign workers, they feel like this too. I've seen it in the eyes of some people at some offices. Work on making everyone feel immersed in the office culture. If you think you are, work harder.
PPS: to workers where foreign people are involved, it's your job to make them feel involved. I know it's easier to just do things normally. Make an effort.