| People who begin to go deaf in adult
life have different problems from those who are born deaf. They have to learn
different ways of behaving and different ways of communication—perhaps at a time
when learning is not all that easy. A heating aid is not a complete solution to the problem. The sound perceived by the deaf person through a hearing aid is distorted and appears to have more background noise than is heard by someone with normal hearing. Deafened people have to lip-read as well. Lipreading is difficult, demands intense concentration, and an uninterrupted direct view of the speaker's face. No other activities can take place at the same time: the lipreadar has to stop eating, stop everything in order to concentrate on hearing. It is not a question of stupidity or bad temper—as it sometimes appears to be—but a question of being very easy to misunderstand when tile sound is distorted. Remember what it's like trying to communicate on a very bad telephone line. Frustrating, isn't it? The deaf have to face that all the time. A useful way of looking at the problem is to see the deaf person as a foreigner—to treat them as if you were in a foreign country. You would speak more clearly, slowly and raise your voice slightly. And you'd use gestures to make your meaning clear, as well as have no hesitation in using pencil and paper to be absolutely certain. You can de all those things with the deaf—as well as making sure you don't obscure your mouth with your hand, a pipe or a cigarette. Another point quite often overlooked is that a hearing aid may be quite efficient and useful in a quiet, carpeted room—but try it in the street during rush hour, in a noisy ear, in a railway station ticket office, a cinema or a concert hall and you've got a really difficult problem to distinguish speech. So don't suggest to or encourage deaf people to go to functions which are going to make their disability appear worse—and increase their sense of failure. Careful selection of cinemas with good sound systems is important and you should experiment to find out where the best seats are for hearing. Fitting adaptors for radio and television, observing which 15lends are easier to understand, and making sure that people talking are well-lit are all useful and positive activities. |