In an Argus article dated Friday, April 23, I was featured as the weekly Wesceleb (“Hi, mom!”), and wanted to follow up with some of my thoughts on the published interview. I am concerned about a few general misstatements that were made as well as with the wording of certain terms that were used to describe me in the Wesceleb article: specifically, “hearing impaired” rather than “deaf” or “hard of hearing.”
The three terms named above have very different connotations within the hearing and Deaf communities and most usually mean very different things to different people. When interviewing with the Argus, I specifically used the terms “deaf” and “hard of hearing” to describe myself, as I do in my daily life. The term “hearing impaired” suggests a pathological definition of deafness that emphasizes an individual’s inability to hear rather than hir ability to see, sign, communicate and do other things that facilitate easier participation in the hearing world. Oliver’s 1977 “social model of disability” suggests that it is a person’s environment that is often handicapping, rather than the person’s disability itself. This model was the basis for the establishment of Wesleyan’s Sign Language House in 1983; it is also the main tenet by which the Sign Language House and the American Sign Language classes here at Wesleyan are run.
I was born severely-to-profoundly deaf. Having never experienced a sense of “perfect hearing,” I feel that the term “hearing impaired” better describes people who are late deafened; for example, an elderly person with degenerative hearing loss. For me, oftentimes, the most “disabling” aspect of being deaf is the communication barrier that frequently arises between others and myself in certain disadvantaging situations. When a teacher continues lecturing while writing on the blackboard with his back turned to me, when someone mumbles and declines to repeat themselves upon my request, or when my friends mindlessly cover their mouths with their palms during a lunchtime conversation, THEN I am forced out of the loop. In a bright, well-lit environment, where I can easily see the other person’s mouth and read hir lips, and when that person makes an effort to look directly at me while enunciating and speaking loudly and slowly, then I am usually able to access almost 100% of the information being transmitted. Learning American Sign Language (ASL) at age fourteen was life changing for me in that it made words previously indiscernible on the lips much easier to see and understand on the hands. ASL relieves me of much of the pressure of straining to fill in gaps in spoken conversations caused by the conditions named above.
Using ASL and reading lips (or, more accurately, “speechreading,”), I can get full access to information that is being shared in the environment around me, and when I am granted access to the same amount and quality of information as everyone else, then I am effectively no longer “impaired.” I hope this explains why I was troubled by the usage of the term “hearing impaired” rather than “deaf” or “hard of hearing.”
Additionally, I was surprised to discover several factual errors in the article, some due to misquoting. I realize, ironically, that this may have been caused by the Argus staff’s potential mishearing of the information that was recorded on audiotape during the interview. Here are some of the facts that I wanted to clarify: Cued Speech phonologically, not “chronologically,” represents vowels and consonants, while professional cuers are known as “transliterators,” not “translators.” Gallaudet University is the only undergraduate university in the nation (actually, in the world) that provides a comprehensive undergraduate liberal arts education for deaf and hard of hearing students. “Residential schools” for Deaf students was misquoted as “special schools,” which is in itself an arguable point! Finally, the premise of the show “Wings,” produced by Quest Productions, is that humans have harnessed and also abused the power of flight, which enabled the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Thanks, Argus staff, for recognizing your mistake and for acting swiftly to correct it. Special thanks to Features co-Editor Kat Johnson for her gracious handling of this situation and her suggestion about writing an Editor’s Notebook. Finally, thank you to the folks out there (you know who you are) who encouraged me to use this opportunity as a way to address the lack of awareness about deafness and Deaf culture here at Wesleyan. It’s never too late to learn.
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