Marissa Graff
Staff Reporter
For many people, common words to refer to those who have a hearing loss are: deaf, hearing impaired, disabled, deaf and dumb, or hard of hearing. In the past, all of these words have been acceptable at some time or another. Today however, the Deaf community rejects all but two of these labels as accurately depicting a person who has a hearing loss. Those two labels are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Within these labels there are further distinctions of how involved a person is within the Deaf community. If a person is heavily involved, and uses American Sign Language, ASL, as a means of communication, then he/she would be considered Deaf. Deaf is distinguished from deaf, meaning that a person has a hearing loss but is not involved in the Deaf community, by the capitalization of the letter ‘D’. The same rule applies to the term Hard of Hearing.
Believe it or not there is a Hard of Hearing community. It consists of people who are not Deaf and not hearing (people who have full use of their hearing organs and use spoken language to communicate). We (I am Hard of Hearing as well) have developed our own community of sorts by not belonging to either hearing or Deaf communities. We understand each other and also tend to use ASL to communicate. There are people who are hard of hearing (not the lower case ‘h’) who do not use ASL and although have a hearing loss, do not belong to the Hard of Hearing Community.
You may be thinking that those of us in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities are awfully picky. Let me explain. We as a united culture do not believe we are disabled. We are fully functioning people. We can hold jobs, maintain families and relationships and enjoy the fullness of life. In the words of former President of Gallaudet, I King Jordan, “The only thing we can’t do is hear.” We use a different language to communicate. Spoken languages are not the only ways to communicate. In fact, there is as much diversity in signed languages as there are in spoken languages.
I wear a hearing aid when I am among hearing people, where speaking is the norm. When I am with my Deaf and Hard of Hearing friends, my spirits come alive. We use a language that is completely accessible and we are not disabled.
This perception of disability is not appropriate to be attached to Deaf and Hard of Hearing people, which is why those communities reject labels that refer to us as disabled. When a person calls me hearing impaired, I feel as if I am a lesser being, like I am not a whole person when I am. It’s not different than when a hearing person walks into a Deaf bar and tries to understand the bartender. That hearing person is now disabled, because he or she cannot understand the bartender. It’s all a matter of perception.
