"deaf"or "hearing impaired"

[smartiejake]

A colleague of mine was on a TA course the other day and was told off for using the term "deaf" to describe one of our pupils.
Not PC apparently. Not allowed to say blind either, that has to be sight impaired.

Funny thing is ALL of my deaf pupils refer to themselves as deaf and all the deaf adults I know also do not like the term hearing impaired.

Who are these do gooders who think they have the right to use a term that the people who they are referring to do not like?

Or am I mistaken in thinking this?

WHat do you lot with hearing difficulties or dcs with hearing difficulties prefer?

Oh dear have I offended someone?

Come on someone must have an opinion?

I thought hearing impaired was somebody who used a hearing aid to help them to hear.
But deaf was somebody that could not hear no matter what.
And the same with blind being unable to see anything, but sight impaired was a difficulty with seeing.

No- all of the deaf children and families I have contact with use hearing aids and some have cochlear implants too. They have varying degrees of deafness too ranging from moderate to profound hearing loss. They all refer to themselves as deaf.

Personally, and I can only speak for myself, my dd3 is deaf. She has a profound loss one side and a moderate loss the other so has some useful hearing. I would say she is deaf, not Deaf,I think some people that consider themselves Deaf may be offended by being called hearing impaired, but I suppose that's a whole other debate. We belong to the National Deaf Childrens Society, Surrey Deaf Childrens Society, London South and West Deaf Childrens Society and often manage to read info on the Royal National Institute for the Deaf site, on balance I would have to say from my point of view that deaf/Deaf is a perfectly acceptable term to use. However, when dd3 starts school she will be going to a school with a hearing impaired base. May be it's just the current guidance with in education at the moment that requires these terms to be used.

I also have a good friend who happens to be blind, not visually impaired.

I tend to use 'hearing impaired' when talking about ds because he did have some hearing ie. did not need aids, but his loss was great enough to have effects on his development ie. not learning to talk...but I'm pretty sure that when I was reading up on it, places like the NDCS website stated that a child is Deaf rather than hearing impaired, no matter how 'moderate' the hearing loss is.

Yes I get your point about the difference between deaf and Deaf. Most of my pupils and their families fall into the little d camp.

I run a Unit which has to be referred to as a "unit for hearing impaired" (actually it used to be a partial hearing unit which is a less derogatory term IMO) but what I am confused about is that the powers that be say you are not -allowed- to use the term deaf (ie. it is not allowed)when that seems to be the label those with verying degrees of deafness prefer.

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I am partially deaf and wear hearing aids.
I don't call myself hearing impaired.
I'm not terribly PC though...

bumping for more opinions

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this seems to be such an individual thing - the National Deaf Children's Society uses the term 'deaf' for all children with hearing loss. Now, dd2 has moderate hearing loss so quite a considerable impairment, but it would never occur to me to refer to her as 'deaf', I always say she has a hearing impairment or a hearing loss. Deaf, to me, indicates profound hearing loss.

Would agree that hearing impaired applies to whole range of hearing loss. Dd is Deaf with a capital D - she is a profound BSL user. I do not use hearing impaired when descibing her hearing loss as her hearing is not impaired - she doesn't have any of it.

I'm profoundly deaf and I generally don't mind what terminology people use. Although I have to say that if there are people in work who talk about my hearing as being hearing impaired, I do say well its more than that - its profound, not because I'm prissy about the terminolgy, but because otherwise they may think I'm able to hear more than what I actually do and that could cause problems with work communication...

I don't see the problem with being called deaf - I am deaf! Dressing it up as audibly (can't even spell that!!) impaired is just too PC for words!!

Mind you, when I'm typing e-mails to people to explain why prefer e-mails to phone calls and accidentally mistype deaf as dead...in which case I do mind that terminology!!

My parents and sister were/are deaf and have different levels of hearing loss they all refer/red to themselves as being deaf (lower case 'd').

I tend to think of my little boy as being hard of hearing.

He manages well with his hearing aids as his hearing loss is mild. I think that to describe my son as deaf would be a bit of an exaggeration, but its not an offensive word. I know several people at work who are very proud to be Deaf (with a captial D).

"Mind you, when I'm typing e-mails to people to explain why prefer e-mails to phone calls and accidentally mistype deaf as dead...in which case I do mind that terminology!! "

lol ... It reminds me of the time that my son looked at leaflet from the National Deaf Children Society. He saw the word "deaf" and went white and as sheet and said "Mummy, I don't want to die!" I asked him why he though he was going to die and he pointed to the word "deaf". The poor thing had misread the word and thought it said "death".

I was thinking about this post today at work. On the school database the profoundly disabled children are decribed as HI (short for hearing impaired) and the children who have partial hearing are described as HD (stands for hearing difficulties)

The HI children have all their lesssons in sign language where as the HD children have their lessons in English, but some of them use radio aids.

Sometimes I think we get so caught up in terminology that we lose the plot. Rather than worrying about labels I think its best to see people as individuals.

Just to throw another word into the mix, I would describe myself as deafened. I had hearing until 2 years ago, now I have none.

As far as I can tell, 'Deaf' refers to the culture of BSL users who were prelingually deaf. Quite an emotive subject and divisive as well.

I have a cochlear implant which works fantastically well, which confuses people even more.

My brother is deaf and he and all his friends much prefer that term, they feel that being deaf is a badge of identity and do not wish this to be diluted into other terminology.

DS and Dd2 are deaf. Depending on who I talk to I refer to their deafness either as deafness or hearing loss or hearing impairment. I think for parents of newly diagnosed children the term "deaf" is quite scary. After a few years down this journey I don't think it matters that much, you know what you're dealing with and that terminology won't change that. DS has a cochlear implant (and can hear brilliantly with it). DD2 will get a CI soon too, hopefully. She's 8 months old and we're hoping to get sthg by autumn.

Going back to the OP, though. I think it's easier to look at "child with a hearing impairment/loss" rather than "deaf child", the same way as i'd feel uncomfortable saying epileptic child rather than child with epilepsy. I doubt that many children identify themselves through their disability. Deaf (big D) as an identitity is something that comes much later.

I have no experience with it, but with Cristina's version, I would still lean towards "a child with deafness" rather than hearing impared.

Anything "impaired" or "challenged" seems to automatically make the non-impaired version the better one, which seems wrong. A bit like referring to people who don't teach, but work in a school "non-teaching staff" as though they are the lesser beings.

Does that make sense?

From a SN perspective, I would rather think of DD as "a child with AS/an AS child" rather than a "non-NT/NT impaired child".

That's a good point, Flamesparrow. I mean the example with non-teaching/non-clinical/non-academic etc staff.

I usually describe myself as deaf, although technically I fall into the category of deafened. These days my level of deafness is moderate to severe.

For me it's easier just say deaf. People usually know what you mean and it takes less syllables.

If someone prefers a different term then I would use that one if talking about them/their child.

Wow lots more posts since I last looked!

Some interesting points.

I think what's important here is although many people with deafness use a variety of different lables to describe their hearing loss, no one actually seems to object to the term deaf.

SO why are we told Hearing Impaired is more PC?

Who decided this?

They obviously haven't asked the people who really matter on this subject!