Everything, Including Deafness, is on a Spectrum
Deafness, Gender, Autism… but today I’m talking about Deafness
It’s Deaf Awareness Month, so I wanted to share a few public service announcements to help you navigate your next encounter with a Deaf person.
Obviously we’re not a homogenous group and individual experiences and preferences will vary, but this information should be relatively generalizable.
Everything is on a Spectrum
This may seem like a silly thing to explain, unfortunately many people do not understand this. Being Deaf is not binary: you are not either fully Deaf or fully hearing.
There is a vast range of degrees of hearing loss, types of hearing loss, onset of hearing loss, and much more. Don’t assume because someone is Deaf that they have zero hearing. Actually, just don’t assume anything. It’s better that way.
Speech is also on a spectrum of sorts. Some Deaf (or Hard of Hearing) people can speak very well. Some don’t speak at all. Most are somewhere in between. I can speak very well, but that sometimes causes me problems because people assume I don’t have hearing loss or that it’s not very impactful when it actually is.
