Hello all, I would like to hear from any d/Deaf/HoH folks if you're willing

I'm back as a lecturer, and one of our students who was last year hard of hearing has experienced more hearing loss, and so is now almost totally deaf. She's a mature student, and doesn't know any Sign yet, so an interpreter is not an option. We've had a session with Student Support, so we have some basic guidelines to go on to know how to help and support her. But, I'd like to hear from the horse's mouth, as it were, on what accommodations are actually helpful or not.

A big thing I do anyway is record all my sessions on Teams at the same time as in-person delivery (I like the NDs to have the option of coming in in person or just logging on from home if they're having a low-spoons day; plus, all students find it helpful to watch the recordings back). Teams does have auto caption, but it's not great (especially with any Welsh placenames). I'm looking into how easily the captions can be corrected after recording. I also make a point of facing her so she can see my mouth.

But, is there anything else? Do any of you have experience of being a student and finding anything particularly helpful or unhelpful? Answers on a postcard to the usual address please and thank you, love you all

Hi guys! I was wondering if you happen to know of any d/Deaf or HoH RPTs? I'm not very active in the community itself, so I'm not familiar with most blogs, but I've seen you all around a lot! And I have a question about writing a HoH character that hasn't been answered in any past guides, but I'd prefer to hear the opinion of someone HoH themself than just ask a few RPTs. Thank you so much! If you're unable to find any, I understand <3

Hey anon! Sadly I don't know of any d/Deaf/HoH blogs but I'll put this in the tags for you and if anybody is comfortable answering questions they can respond to the post!

update from another anon: @deafaq is an amazing blog run by deaf and HoH people made for people who are hearing to ask questions about deafness and Deaf culture so if they haven't checked there yet, a HUGE rec. They haven't posted in 3 months but if the anon searches they may find stuff there as well. They're written a character guide too, so maybe the anon has stumbled into that but I think it's a pretty nifty blog

if you want to learn sign language of any kind your one and only reason for it should be proper person to person communication. not because it's "so beautiful", not so you can talk shit and nothing else, not so you can say swear words without other people knowing.

if you're learning sign language your one and only reason should be to communicate with people who use sign language. learning sign language means learning about an entire complicated, extremely important culture and the people who are a part of that culture.

you can not learn sign language without learning about d/Deaf culture in depth. it also means learning to stay in your lane on d/Deaf issues. learning sign language and learning about d/Deaf culture does not mean you get to speak on d/Deaf issues, and a lot of hearing people don't realize that.

this has been a notice from a d/Deaf person

british sign language for unity

i don’t know what it is about sign language that makes ppl say the most buckwild most uninformed shit you’ve ever seen in your life. like. i’m hoh and only conversationally fluent. i have access needs, sure, but i’m not qualified to educate anyone about sign language. so i generally stay out of it.

the thing is, there’s only so many times you can see someone confidently say some shit like “why didn’t they just make ONE sign language???” or “actually every country has their own asl” or “wait, i can answer this! i don’t know anything about sign language, but i read a wattpad fic about a Deaf girl in 2015—” before you start chewing on walls

Happy disability pride month! I decided to draw some disabled Barbies, most, if not all, from the fashionista line!

note: I'm not fluent in Brazilian Sign Language, please let me know if I messed this up in any way!!

[ ID: a digital, stylized drawing of five women sitting around a brown table and talking to each other. The background is transparent, and there's some shading. The women are, from left to right:

A woman a wheelchair and has dark skin, black eyes and long, coily, black hair, and wears pink heart glasses and a short, sleek, rainbow striped dress. Then, a woman with Down Syndrome with tanned skin, hazel eyes and long, wavy, blonde hair, and wears a white dress puffy sleeves, pink, yellow and purple flowers, a pink necklace and pink orthopedic shoes. They both smile.

Then, a Deaf woman with pale skin, green eyes and long, straight, red-ish brown hair in a high ponytail, and wears hot pink hearing aids, a short, black dress with a white collar and hot pink, white and purple flowers and dark hot pink shoes. She does the sign for bus in Brazilian Sign Language, her two hands close to her chest, curved inwards, then going forward, breaking apart, like a bus door opening.

Next to her is a woman with vitiligo with dark skin, dark brown eyes and long, dark brown, coily hair in a large bun, wearing a long, pink, yellow and white striped dress and white shoes. Finally, a woman with alopecia with medium tone skin, brown eyes and no hair, wearing a hot pink dress with puffy sleeves and purple flowers, golden hoop earrings and white shoes. They both have neutral expressions. /End id ]

YouTube really needs to be better at captioning

not that anyone is wondering or has noticed bc no one knows who i am lmao but the reason i’m often interacting with posts in the replies instead of reblogging your posts and putting comments in the tags is because y’all are STILL NOT CAPTIONING OR TRANSCRIBING THE VIDEOS YOU POST and i’m not gonna reblog uncaptioned videos like come on how many times do we have to have this conversation 😭😭😭

Thank the Lord for whoever created VPN !!!

Now I can watch Switched at Birth! It have American Sign Language a lot, and many D/deaf and HoH characters.

it makes me happy because even though it is very different between being hearing nonverbal and being D/deaf (even if nonspeaking/non-oral D/deaf person), it is still the closest thing i have to see someone who communicates a bit like me :D

There is also another TV show on Freeform (same network) called "Speechless" that have main character with Cerebral Palsy nonspeaking use powerchair and communication board with words/letters and laser pointer on his glasses to communicate. I hope to watch that too, eventually.

Hearing and History

12th April 2023

So, I recently found out that my level of hearing is a lot lower than I thought it was and probably always has been.

What does this mean? Basically I probably would've benefited from hearing aids and learning sign language as a child rather than relying on self-taught lip-reading, guesswork, and asking people to repeat themselves/be patient.

Let me tell you, people are not always good at being patient.

I have very mixed feelings about this. Listening is very tiring, and I have always said this! I couldn't do mental maths questions because they were on a tape recording. Ditto language listening and oral exams, which I kept failing at school. French was nearly impossible for me because I cannot hear the words or make sense of the month movements. Thank gd for Spanish!

I didn't have a hearing test until I was in secondary school. That policy has changed now in the NHS so hearing loss is picked up very soon after birth. Basically, there were a bunch of points in my life when someone could have intervened to give me the tools to navigate the world rather than just let me figure it out.

I am not part of the Deaf community. I don't know anybody my age who is hard of hearing or deaf. My family thought it was 'normal' because my mum, her sister, and my grandad all have hearing loss. I was teased for being deaf while simultaneously nobody taking the implications of my deafness seriously. It was a lose-lose situation. Essentially, it wasn't that I wasn't deaf enough, it was that it didn't effect me obviously enough for anyone to do anything.

Now I have hearing aids, I can hear music, I can hear lyrics. I can hear (although not focus on) multiple conversations. Birds are insanely fucking loud. Projectors and air-conditioning drive me up the wall. My tinnitus is definitely worse, but that may also be a side effect of long covid (apparently that's a thing). It's a wild experience that I'm still getting used to, a year later.

I would still love to learn sign language. But now's not a great time: I'm tired, working and studying full-time, recovering from covid, and generally have shit going on. British Sign Language lessons are expensive in person, but learning online is something I'd rather avoid as I can't concentrate easily. This means more travel, more money, more time, more energy. This means I have to wait.

I wish I could've had the chance to learn when I was first diagnosed.

TLDR; just because you can work to the point of exhaustion to fit the needs of the world, doesn't mean you should have to! You deserve accommodations. The world needs to bend so that people don't break.

I don't know if this has been done before, but we need an RR duo of someone who is hard of hearing or death and someone who is either mute or just is incredibly good at sign language because someone in their family is also hard of hearing or deaf. The pair met at a young age because they went to the same camp. They bonded over their love of, like, snails. The pair kept in touch throughout the years, and when they heard about TDRR, they thought it'd be fun. Even if they didn't win, they'd get to not only get to explore the world, but they'd also get to bond more.

.

now that i have my hearing aids it's like im taking a class in sounds™ and i am so interested in the curriculum

Thinking about something:

I have variable functioning. Using functioning here because that's how I experience it.

In particular, I struggle with both visual and auditory processing. At the best of times, I can watch videos. Unless I am hyperfocused though, I usually have to watch even TV shows in 20 minute chunks. Videos on the internet that are over three minutes? Basically not happening most of the time.

I'd also like to note that my low functioning days can be the upper extent of someone else's given capabilities ever.

I'm going to use a personal example here to make my point.

I NEED video descriptions for videos on bad days. Not "it's more convenient", not "it's helpful", but as in "I literally am INCAPABLE of watching the video and getting ANY of the visual or auditory information out of it". Sure, I can stare at the screen, but there will be crickets chirping in my mind and afterward I could not tell you anything about it's content.

Again, I'd like to emphasize that for some neurodivergent people, this is ALWAYS true.

So why do I bring this up?

I'd like to talk about the curb cut effect within disabled communities, and mind body dualism.

Here's the thing: People often treat the curb cut effect for other disabled people as if it's functionally the same as the curb cut effect for abled people. They act as though if you're not the main group(s) an accessibility tool was designed for, that you don't NEED it, especially if it was designed for a physical disability and you need it for reasons related to neurodivergence.

This I think also stems from both the stigma of neurodivergence as either "high-functioning" neurotypical-passing or completely unable to care for oneself. More even than that, though, I think it stems from the idea that if the issue is in your brain, you are capable of "overcoming" it and doing the thing in question without the accessibility tool. It becomes "if you can function at all, you're high functioning, and if you're high functioning, you're capable of doing the thing".

(As an aside, don't get me STARTED on the whole "you're not who this was intended for and therefore don't need it" thing that sometimes happens even between solely physical disabilities. Just as an example, there are so many different reasons that someone might need a wheelchair other than paralysis (hi! ambulatory wheelchair user here) and some people without paralysis are even still non-ambulatory wheelchair users.)

With video descriptions, I've had people basically say "your eyes work, so the description is just a nice bonus, I NEED it". And I want to scream "my eyes work, but my brain? the part that actually processes and gives meaning to the visual noise around me? fucking DOESN'T". On my worst days I would not be able to get out of the way of a SPEEDING CAR because it would take so long for my brain to recognize it as such and then further label it as a danger and THEN push me to react.

And I'm not going to say "oh, imagine if someone said 'just use [disabled body part], it's POSSIBLE for you to do so'," because I know people absolutely do that. In particular, I'm willing to bet people with low vision/who are legally blind with very limited vision and people who are hard of hearing both (video descriptions also being necessary for D/deaf and HoH folks when the videos themselves are uncaptioned) experience this to the extreme - and even blind with no vision and who are D/deaf do as well - because ableists are ignorant assholes.

My point is that it's not any more okay to do with neurodivergence.

I'd also like to add that even if someone CAN access something without the accommodation, that kind of dismissiveness is still shitty. Yeah, I CAN buy groceries without a mobility aid, but by the time I finish I will be sweating, shaking, about to pass out, in a shit ton of pain especially in my back and the soles of my feet, and will spend the next few days having a POTS and fibro flareup - to the extent that I will not be able to put weight on my feet without it feeling like I'm standing on knives. Even then I can still technically walk, but again, on KNIVES.

And yeah, on good days, I CAN watch the video instead of reading the description, where even other neurodivergent people might not be able to. But I still can't do so without consequences. A three minute video will mean not absorbing part of the information, getting exhausted, and often contributing to overstimulation and potentially leading to a meltdown.

A ten minute video can quite literally use up all my spoons for the day. Keep in mind I already have so few due to executive dysfunction specifically that I struggle with tasks as basic as "starting rice to cook in the rice cooker" and "gathering my meds to take them" and "taking my T" (which I literally haven't done since I finally got it refilled for that reason, despite the crippling* dysphoria) and "doing even the most basic of house cleaning or hygiene tasks such as vacuuming or brushing my teeth".

A video can use all of those spoons and quite honestly then some, leaving me unable to take care of myself. I have not eaten for entire days at a time because I literally am not able to make food due to not having spoons. When it's a choice between putting that effort in to watch a video and, y'know, being able to function at the most basic level, the end result is going to be the same as when I am incapable of watching the video at all: I'm not going to watch it.

That's still major consequences.

But for many people, my being able to do it at all, even some of the time, means I can do it perfectly, always - which you may recognize as just textbook ableism. This not only ignores the times I can't do it at all, but gets extrapolated into "anyone with your same diagnosis can do it" even for those that can't, at all, ever.

The brain is just an organ. There are neurological disabilities that make the brain unable to do certain things just like there are physical disabilities that make the body unable to do certain things (also, not all physical disabilities are even a complete and/or constant inability, some fluctuate or are permanently hard-but-not-technically-impossible, like my pain/grocery example above. Neurodivergence doesn't mean "an ailment of the spiritmind, divorced from the body, and able to be overridden by an effort of will".

So stop being ableist about other disabled people benefitting from, using, and NEEDING a particular accommodation. It's one thing to acknowledge that there are given cases where someone's need is greater, but it's another thing entirely to speak over and erase the people for whom the need is just as great, just because you don't believe them based on the diagnosis they have. Don't make broad, sweeping, and broad generalizations about which DIAGNOSES actually need a given thing, and instead actually listen to and trust PEOPLE when they say they need it as much as you.

*While I think gatekeeping the word is bullshit anyway, I'm physically disabled myself. If you have a problem with me using any form of the word cripple as I see fit, you can suck this crip's salty shriveled nutsack and cry about it.

Being hard of hearing with juuust enough ability to hear people fine with your hearing aids really results in people treating you like you aren't deaf at all. I've been accused of 'not being THAT deaf' when I ask someone to repeat something or need them to tell me what someone else said. I am that deaf actually, Linda, being able to hear with my aid doesn't suddenly make me a hearing person - an aid is helpful, it's an aid, but it doesn't erase my disability. Anyway I'll be turning off my hearing aid now, so kindly fuck off Linda.

I have, to say the least, a strange relationship with my identity. Specifically when it comes to my hearing, and lack thereof. I was completely hearing for most of my life. I have friends and family deeply intertwined in the D/deaf community and decided to learn ASL when I was about 13. When I was 14, I woke up one day and everything sounded incredibly muffled. Like when you're on the phone with someone who has poor cell service and they sound like they're going through a tunnel. I told my parents and I got an appointment with my general doctor. She checked my ears and told me everything seemed normal. No excess pressure, no wax buildup, nothing. I was scheduled with an audiologist and got my hearing tested. They said everything was completely typical. About a month after my 15th birthday, I stopped being able to hear out of my left ear. A bit of panic ensued, i was scheduled with another audiologist. They said my hearing was completely typical and I just need to pay more attention. In a day-to-day setting, i cannot hear a single sound out of my left ear. My right ear is still incredibly muffled. It impacts my life regularly and I rely heavily on ASL and lipreading. But as soon as I'm put in a silent little white soundbooth for a beep test, it seems completely fine. The many, many specialists I've now seen all assume its psychological. All we know is that its *not* auditory processing disorder. My insurance won't cover further testing and my family can't afford a several thousand dollar shot in the dark. I've learned to live with it but i feel excluded everywhere I go. I've never met someone else with a story like mine. My hearing friends don't understand and my Deaf friends don't fully accept me into the community because, on a medical chart, I am hearing. I guess I'm just looking for someone else like me.