What matters deafness of the ears, when the mind hears?

This is not a joke. Repeat - not a joke.

Hearing loss of any degree or even total deafness need not disqualify anyone from earning a pilot’s certificate. From the beginning of aviation, deaf and hard of hearing people have flown airplanes solo in the United States, Canada and some other countries, and today some 100 to 120 of them are active pilots and aircraft owners. On this site you can see how they won their wings without having to use the radio, and, if you like, join them in the skies as members of the Deaf Pilots Association.

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Some of the links may be a bit dated, either weeks or months or, sometimes, years old, but they are as relevant and compelling as ever.

The opening paragraph of the following article is kind of… heartbreaking.

In some parts of the world, a deaf child is viewed as a punishment from God. The child is chained to a bed, occasionally fed and can have its tongue cut off to help stop it from crying.

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Sounds complex, but it isn’t really.

Guess what is pathological viewpoint and which is cultural? No prizes for correct answers though!

Parent A: My child is deaf. With a cochlear implant and good speech training, my child will learn to talk and will be mainstreamed. People will not be able to tell that my child is deaf.

Parent B: My child is deaf. With both sign language and a cochlear implant, and good speech training, my child will be able to communicate with both hearing and deaf people. My child may or may not be mainstreamed. People may or may not be able to tell that my child is deaf, and it does not matter if they can or can not.

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I love this post - it says what I’ve always wanted to yell to the whole wide (ignorant) world.

For the record, I describe myself as hearing-impaired to new people I meet. I am Deaf to Deaf people. I am hardly ever deaf or hard of hearing though.

 The debate on which terms to use: deaf, hearing loss, and so on, has been around as long as deafness. Political correctness aside (these terms should all be fine anyway), each one conveys different connotations. The one that may not be politically correct is “hearing impaired” because some see “impaired” as implying a disability. When I say “hearing impaired,” it’s out of laziness because “hard of hearing” takes more effort to say. Same amount of syllables, but still I find it easier to say “hearing impaired.”

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(The rest of this blog looks real interesting. I’ll be browsing through the archives.)

I have no personal experience of cued speech, or even of speech therapy sessions (except that one time), as I picked up speech before my hearing went down the drain, into the sewer before being discharged into the sea.

Jeff, a self-proclaimed "deaf moderate liberterian", explains how cued speech has helped him.

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A universal problem confronting the deaf: Schools for the deaf are being merged, closed down or otherwise marginalised. It happens everywhere, even in the States - home of the brave, land of the free.  

“As long as political people are deciding the future of education for the deaf and blind, nothing will get better,” said Angel Ramos, former superintendent of the ISDB. “Even if you look at the committee that is studying all this, you will find that there are no educators in the field, or educators who are deaf. How can they understand this?”

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