Creating A Better World

Hearing Loss and Living With Permanent Hearing Loss

Deafness is an invisible disability. When I was diagnosed with hearing loss thirty years ago, early intervention programs for deaf children did’nt exist. Tests for newborns were only given if requested by a mother. Deaf schools taught total communication programs where American Sign Language (ASL) was incorporated.

Now, nearly all deaf children participate in early-intervention programs by states and every newborn is tested for hearing-impairment before leaving the hospital. Over 80% of students in deaf programs learn the auditory-oral program where they are taught how to speak and how to read lips. Newborns are fitted with hearing aids for their ears to hear sound and 50% of hearing-impaired preschoolers receive cochlear implants.

As a result, most hearing-impaired or deaf students are mainstreamed into the general school population by the time they reach kindergarten. Speech deficits are corrected early before becoming a permanent situation. Despite this progress, people with hearing loss still face prejudice from the general population.

In his book, “Sound Minds in a Soundless World,” Luther D. Robinson, MD says, “Like many social attitudes, prejudice against deaf persons is partly a cultural inheritance, a legacy from past times when any kind of handcap was superstitiously equated with inferiority.”

Progress happens in small steps. In thirty years, analog hearing aids with limited sound enhancement capabilities have given way to digital hearing aids. Hearing-impaired students sit in the same classrooms with their hearing counterparts. But the social stereotype of inferiority still exists, and will continue to exist as long as deafness remains an invisible disability.