 Number 263 - April 2005 |
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| Now Hear This! - Part 1 | |
| by K. Joyce McDonald, PC Alamode Magazine | |
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In June, our editor, Joseph de Leon, e-mailed me with the following comments and request. We haven't discussed the matter any further, but I was inspired by his comments to write some insights. He said,
"I also wanted to ask you about being hearing-impaired. I have been studying sign language at San Antonio College to better communicate with Deaf students who occasionally attend my classes. One thing I have discovered is that some members of the Deaf community are generally several years behind in computer literacy than hearing people. One of my upcoming goals is to start integrating some content into the PC Alamode targeted at the Deaf and hard of hearing communities. If you are interested in sharing your experiences related to technology, please let me know." I was happy to oblige, and my first insights follow. My viewpoint is colored by the history of my deafness and how I discovered it. To understand my attitude, let me first describe my history. Have you seen the movie "At First Sight?" It stars Val Kilmer as a man blind since birth who, through some kind of heroic procedure, gains his sight. When he sees, he isn't all that certain that he either likes it or needs it. After all, he has been able to function normally (or normally for him) just the way he was. Processing the input from his eyes, the bright lights, colors, objects, put a tremendous strain on his brain and his psyche. Thus, when his sight begins to fail, he is not all that disappointed. Had he lost his sight as a child or an adult, he would probably welcome its restoration with unbridled joy. However, since he has never had sight, he never learned to need or value it. I identified with this character, because I have been moderately deaf since birth. Unaided, I have never had more than 60% of what is defined as normal hearing. Thus, for me, 60% was normal. My attitude was reinforced by the school system of the fifties, a time when school personnel expected children to be normal and didn't routinely test children for vision or hearing impairments unless they ran into doors or didn't jump when something exploded. My husband had heard that when one of a human's input senses is deficient or nonexistent, at least one other sense is heightened. Since I wear glasses, my heightened sense didn't appear to be my vision. What about my other senses? I told him that I'm certain that God has a sense of humor because my only heightened sense is my sense of smell. My heightened ability to smell has probably affected my life as much as my lack of hearing. On more than one occasion, I have had to leave church because a woman nearby was wearing a perfume strong enough to give me a migraine headache. On a more positive note, I often stick my head inside the freezer at the supermarket to get an invigorating sniff of ice cream. A heightened sense only works if it compensates for a weaker one, and smell does little to compensate for my lack of hearing unless the building is on fire. My sight, however, though not exceptional, did manage in some way to compensate, enabling me to read lips and body language and, more important, to read the printed page. |
Once I learned to read, I read peanut butter jars, bread wrappers, paint cans, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and appliance manuals--whatever was in front of me. In school, I may not have been able to hear the teacher, but I could read the textbooks and I could read the tests and I could write the answers. I didn't always get the best grades in conduct. Some teachers labeled me uncooperative, especially those that insisted that the tall people sit in the back of the room where I couldn't hear. I cared little about conduct grades so I wasn't overly troubled by the occasional unsatisfactory conduct report. I got better at reading lips and deciphering body language, so by high school, such reports were rare. However, my senior year in high school, when I made an unexpected 1350 on my SAT, I gained another label - "Underachiever".
At the University of Texas, no one told me I shouldn't, so I majored in a foreign language - Russian. The Cold War was on, so people asked if I planned to be an interpreter. I replied, "Only if we want World War III". What I really wanted to do was to read and write this fascinating language, and eventually to teach it. I learned to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and my favorite, Pushkin, in the original Russian and graduated, not at the top of my class, but with a degree. After that, I went on to teach English, History and Russian at the high school level for several years. I was thirty-two years old when it dawned on me that something was not quite right with my hearing. Why at 32, I can't say. The Ear Nose and Throat doctor I visited was not happy when he got back the results of my hearing tests. He confirmed that I could only hear 60% of the test sounds and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. When I asked about hearing aids, he referred me to an audiologist. The audiologist confirmed the diagnosis and qualified it with another piece of bad news: the 60% of hearing that I do have exists in the ultra-high and ultra-low frequency range, with very little in the mid (or voice) range. Corrective aids were available, but they would be limited in their effectiveness and shockingly expensive. She was right on both counts, especially the second. My last pair of eight-channel aids cost seven grand at a discount, none of which is covered by insurance. I have worn hearing aids for 24 years, and they have helped, especially in the workplace, but they have not been my salvation. Their contribution to my life and my career cannot approach the contribution made by my computers. You should understand, then, why I was shocked to read in Joseph's message that "the Deaf community is generally several years behind in computer literacy than hearing people." That fact, dear Editor, is a doggone crying shame. Joyce Copyright (c) 1996-2004 Alamo PC Organization, Inc. San Antonio, TX USA |
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Number 263 - April 2005
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