Bridging the Gap Between the Hearing & Deaf Worlds
For many people who are considered to be small ‘d’ deaf and particularly those who are hard of hearing, we are constantly labelled as being “not deaf enough” for the d/Deaf world, and “not hearing enough” for the mainstream hearing world.
The only place left is that awkward middle bit, the intbetweener, the lonely bit, where it is tough because you don’t feel like you belong anywhere.
Have you ever wondered what is it like for a deaf/hard of hearing student to attend mainstream schools?
Or perhaps you wanted to hear from someone else’s experience?
As well as everything that is covered on this site that students can go through, like going through concentration fatigue or suffering from deaf anxiety, there are also unique challenges that deaf/hard of hearing students goes through.
Those challenges are likely to be amplified at mainstream schools (though deaf schools also have their own unique challenges too).
In this video, I share my own personal experiences at primary and secondary/high school.
As someone who has experienced various in-flight entertainment systems when going on a long-haul flight, I can’t help but realising that I never get the full experience as they are not accessible. And that applies to various airlines across different countries. Sure, I can read books or maybe even do some work. But sometimes, you […]
The new emojis which are displaying hearing aids and a person signing are finally out, alongside many other emojis.
But are they truly accurate? And do they really represent d/Deaf people? Because it’s one thing to display hearing aids and a person signing, it’s another to make sure that they are accurate and it represents all d/Deaf and hard of hearing people.
For most, if not all d/Deaf and hard of hearing people, social events can be an awkward one and a difficult one at the same time.
If everyone is talking and the environment is not right, then it’s very easy to feel secluded and left alone.
But what if you, as a hearing person, want to prevent that? How can you help to make a d/Deaf/hard of hearing person feel included, at least as much as possible?
Some of the topics that have been discussed here on this site are around mental health, concentration fatigue and deaf anxiety.
These are also the posts that have been getting a lot of attention lately, especially the latter.
But you also need to look after yourself, and this is why in this podcast, I talk about the importance of being selfish just so you can look after yourself.
Because if you don’t look after yourself, you can’t look after other people.
I learnt a new phrase recently: ‘deaf anxiety’.
After reading and learning more about, I realised that whenever I get anxiety, it is mostly likely because of my lack of ability to hear. And the more I read about it, the more I realised that it resonates with me and it’s definitely a thing.
It also made me aware that it’s a topic that we should be talking about more often, and this is why I decided to open up about it.
In this episode, I answer the question on what is the easiest language to lipread?
This is yet another question that I’ve seen crop up on Google and Quora.
Even though the easy answer is whatever is your main spoken language, the other answer is the dreaded “it depends”.
Because it’s all well and good trying to get a linguistic to understand which language is the easiest and hardest to lip-read; but it’s all irrelevant because it never allows you to completely comprehend what the person is saying.
As technology gets more and more sophisticated, we have seen gadgets that has literally changed our lives, and in many cases for the better. With the rise of technology such as smart speakers, we are becoming more demanding with what our gadget.
Remember how the remote control was seen as an innovative gadget? Now, it’s just something plain and normal.
But has technology gotten too far when it comes to using artificial technology to interpret sign languages? Or should we encourage it like we already do with oral languages?
Learn more about interpreting sign language with technology here
