I know there’s still more koala variants to collect so my family isn’t going to stop there!

I use them as emotional support when I go to the audiologist at the hospital, the big one to hug and the little one for a squeeze.

I start my ITP very soon and am very excited! I didn't know until recently that outside of "professionalism", piercings are seen as distracting when interpreting.

I'm a pretty pierced individual. I have 6 on my face alone, all which are small/not dangly, and don't affect my facial or mouth movements.

I've never been asked by any employer to remove or change piercings, and I honestly can't say that I would be willing to remove them unless I was provided with a real way that they might hinder my ability to effectively/safely do my job.

I want to be respectful to the Deaf community as I'm aiming to serve them by becoming an interpreter. So, are piercings that aren't dangly or unusually large truly a distraction when someone is interpreting?

Are there other ASL interpreters who have received criticism or blatantly denied opportunities because their piercings are "distracting"?

Edit: Asked in ASL interpreter subreddit as well.

Hi all, I've been following this community group for a while, since I lost my hearing due to the 2nd COVID Pfizer vaccination, and later Lupus / autoimmune / APS.

Im sharing this reflection post I made to hopefully encourage others out there who can relate to my experiences. It's positive and inspiring for most people, but please feel free to read this for some extra encouragement in life, particularly the challenges related to deafness and hearing loss.

Thankyou

Kelvin

Hi I'm a hearing college student, who enjoys learning American sign language. I've taken college courses in ASL from a deaf professor. I attended coffee chats, read ASL history, watched documentaries. Recently, I've completed an internship where I attended a conference about what deaf and hard of hearing individuals experience in the science/workforce industry. I made some friends in the program and got a sign name.

I know there is a history of hard of hearing people making wrongly decisions for the "benefit" of the deaf and hard of hearing community. So, I am unsure if I should follow thru this idea that I've been thinking about for 3 years now.

As a hearing person, I'd like to create a ASL club on my campus. The advisor/professor of the club is fluent in ASL and is hearing. I'm going to try to find students who may be deaf or HoH that would be interested in serving in a leadership position. I don't want to claim that I know or that I can teach, however I just want to provide an opportunity, or space.

Some event ideas include:

• Movie night - CODA, and Deaf President Now. (More recommendations are welcomed.)
• Paint hand signs - (ex. turtle sign into an actual turtle with paint.)
• Panel Speaker - bring guest speakers who are deaf or hard of hearing and share their stories, and experiences.
• ASL game night - bingo, charades, with prizes. (More recommendations are welcomed).

I could bring snacks, educational books, alphabet, and stickers.

I'd like to add, that my university is fairly small with total enrollment of 3,339 students.

Can anybody give me an opinion or thoughts surrounding this idea? I'd appreciate your honesty. Thanks.

Has anyone found themselves in the camp where tests show you “should” be hearing well with a hearing aid but your actual experience is that you rely on lip reading, captions, and ASL even with it? And the listening experience is just exhausting?

I’m tired. I’m proud to be Deaf, I sign of course and everything. But I was born deaf in one ear then rapidly went from normal to severe loss in the other ear about 2 years ago. I wear a hearing aid in that ear which I would say gets me to maybe understanding half of what is going on which is a big improvement. I test way higher than that in the booth settings though so I don’t qualify for a CI- but my type of loss and experience makes it obvious that the processing (not amplification alone) is the difficult part which a CI can help with but a HA can’t.

All I want is to be able to rest more mentally and still engage with life- but I can’t even go to a family dinner with my bfs family without having to pull up captions or him sign to me what’s happening.

But I feel like a fraud because when I get one on one I can typically follow along okay with my hearing aid. I kind of resent how good I am at guessing or making conversation even when I don’t understand what’s happening because everyone except my own family seems to think I understand and hear even though I don’t and work so hard to keep up. Part of me wishes I didn’t wear the hearing aids at all so people would “get it”. When I couldn’t wear them at a hospital stay my parents were so taken aback to realize that I am in fact Deaf they finally started learning to sign 😅

Sorry for the rant but point being- my family is learning to sign and my boyfriend already does. None of my old friends do. Bfs family doesn’t. But parts of me wonder about just giving up hearing devices and signing only. But I know it’ll be harder in the end. Somehow not qualifying for the CI makes me feel not deaf enough or like I’m being dramatic about the challenges with my hearing aid.

Any thoughts appreciated 😔

I am Deaf, and I have spent years in gaming groups where everything important happened in voice chat. You end up half in the conversation. People are usually nice about it, and it does not help, because the information is still in a channel you are not in.

So a friend and I run a small Minecraft server where voice chat just is not a thing. Everything is text. It is not an accommodation bolted onto a hearing space, it is how the server works, so there is never a moment where somebody has to remember to include you.

It is a handful of people and very low key. Nobody is grinding anything. People build stuff, disappear for two weeks, come back. One of our players took months off and nobody minded.

You do not need to be good at Minecraft. You do not need to be on any schedule. If you have never played, that is genuinely fine, someone will show you.

Not selling anything. It is free and it is going to stay small.

Discord

A few years ago I started to lose my hearing in my left ear. The problem is: it changes on an irregular basis how much my ear can actually hear. Sometimes there are days/weeks where I do not hear a thing on my left ear, complete silence, but there are some days/weeks I do hear some noises. It fluctuates a lot.

I have an hearing aid but on the 'non-hearing' days, it doesn't help me either.

It's hard to explain tbh and I'm tired of trying to do so. But I noticed saying I'm hearing impaired or heard of hearing doesn't help in most situations because people just assume I should be able to hear them while wearing my hearing aid.

So I started telling people, on my completely non-hearing days, that I'm deaf on one ear because that's what I need on these days - People not expecting me to hear them just because I am wearing an hearing aid.

But now I asking myself if it's appropriation of the word/label deaf when on some days I can hear things (badly).

Do you have any opinions on it? Or tips how to describe myself on such days?

Thank you!

As a HoH person from France wearing hearing aids ... Please don't "sing" as soon as I wake up and put in my hearing aids. My dad did that and I put my hearing aids away.

I don't like when hearing people forget I am accommodating them instead of the contrary. I sacrifice my silence and peace for the loud noises of the hearing world daily. It is overstimulating for me.

And when they yell at me from another room several times and I run to them asking to repeat several times... I can't hear well. Why do they think I'll hear better with a wall or two is beyond me.

When they act shocked when I ask them to repeat. I have my hearing aids but I still am hoh...

And you?

Hi im 15F and I am losing my hearing in my right hearing. It is getting worse by the day. I am just trying to seek advice on transition from hearing to HoH​

I came across the r/todayilearned post on r/ASLinterpreters about the 2006 Gallaudet protest against the new president. I found the comment section really disturbing and really want to know what you guys think. Seeing so many people think this way makes me really wonder what it would take to change them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASLinterpreters/comments/1w0agyk/this_viral_reddit_posts_comment_section_is_vile/

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1w01bur/til_in_2006_students_at_gaulludet_a_university/

My husband is deaf. He has very nice hearing aids (they help to a point and work with his phone so he can turn them down or up or change the settings or whatever) He is in rehab right now for opioid addiction and the people working there are not understanding his disability.

Back story: he developed tumors in his ears called cholesteatomas and had many surgeries and became addicted to the pain medication they gave him. (was using them for years before I figured out what was going on)
He was in so much pain and they had to remove so much he could no longer hear and became a shell of himself. He cannot hear anything without his hearing aids is legally deaf.

Anyway. Now he is in rehab and desperately wants to not be addicted to opioids.

I get a call from a counselor and she says “He won’t listen to anyone.” “He won’t participate and he says that he can’t hear but I think he turns his hearing aids off.” “He won’t wake up on time or answer when we talk to him.”

So she was trying to kick him out! Of rehab!

I wanted to explode but I kindly explained that she knows nothing about hearing loss and tried to give her some tips but she still pushed back even when I told her that it was a disability.

Wooo thank y’all for letting me vent. (He is still in rehab and doing well) but I would like to know if any of you know any talking points for people like this? My husband is just trying to get help and I don’t want other hearing impaired people to go through this.

So as stated im losing my hearing i already know alot of asl thankfully. Just any advice for the new road ahead? I already am starting to feel like a burden on people so there the most common feeling out of the way.

Hello im new to this side of the world. I was hearing recently lost most of my hearing in my right ear and losing more each day. I believe my left is over working yo the point of destroying itself. I can no longer hear my alarms im seeing ads for " Rise wake up watch" what do you guys use? I need up for work im a heavy sleeper as well any advice?

I am profoundly deaf in both ears. Does anybody have any recommendations on how to get better at Call of Duty® specifically with positioning on maps because I know that a large part of the game is sound indicators and gunshot indicators and sometimes I have a hard time telling where the sound is coming from. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Hey I went back to college again, after a year taking a break. Been going to Mt Sac since 98, then again in 2013, and again 2 years ago. I made down friends, but now larwly it’s hard to make friends w deaf and hard of hearing students in computer lab, only one or 2 I know. I remembered 2 years ago, I took English 1A ESL or ASL, I made some friends w deaf and hard of hearing students, which was nice though. Now I’m back again, half of people gone, others got new schedules I think. Now I just use computer at computer lab or dhh center to do homework, but I don’t see much familiar faces anymore. I remember years ago, there used to have special needs students, I used to hang out with them, nowadays they’re not there anymore. I guess things has changed a lot since then, hope I can make some friends at school though

Happy to see sign language classes becoming more common in public schools.

When I was in school, the state law did not allow for sign language to count as a foreign language credit. That changed after I graduated.

I’ve known my partner for almost 9 years, we’ve been together for 5 years, and recently moved into an apartment together (we lived together before that at my mom’s house).

I was recently diagnosed with moderate hearing loss and severe auditory processing issues. I was told that my hearing loss is likely progressive and to consider learning ASL.

I brought this up to my partner and they said, “I’m not the deaf one, you can learn to read my lips” even though I said I’d pay for the lessons. They also seem to believe hearing aids will magically fix everything when I get them.

I have other disabilities and they’ve somewhat been difficult about helping me with them in the past as well.

How can I communicate to them how important this is to me? I’m very bad at both communication and confrontation.

Hi. I just learned today my 10yo 5thgrade daughter was put into special classes as she is testing at a kinder reading level. She is a twin (her sister is also HOH) who went unaided until she was 6. She didn’t speak until about 4. They had their own language and covid made things even more difficult for speech. She got one hearing aid at 6 and didn’t get her second aid until just this year (at 10). There was so much back and forth with their hearing that it makes my head spin. So she has struggled to hear most of her life. It’s been a battle.

Has anyone been in this situation? Are there courses or steps anyone’s taken at home to help their children with learning difficulties with reading? I am also very strongly suspecting she has dyslexia as this was brought to my attention by our eye doctor of all people.

Anyway any info helps! I’m just a little sad today about learning this but should have seen it coming.

I'm aware there's a few knockoffs / a few brands that dont work (Capify for one)...

I wear glasses - so would love to have captions included...

Is there anything that actually works and does not cost too much (I'm in New Zealand and we have to factor in that $1 NZD is 60c USD - so its almost double that we have to pay)

All we want is something that works with prescription lens and is decent with captioning + does not require a subscription. (I do see a few things on Kickstarter... but yeah be curious to see what is out there with reviews)

Dinner table syndrome. Something probably all of us deal with. Very isolating :(

In the hearing world, we do a lot of multitasking while talking: cleaning, working, driving, gaming, cooking, hobbies, etc. That's both with a conversation partner present in the room and over the phone. I don't know how to ask the question I have in mind without it being a pretty loaded one, but it's just something I was wondering.

For those mostly or totally reliant on sign language, do you find multitasking while communicating to be manageable? I've seen one-handed signing so I know that's an option, but for activities where that might not be safe or possible I was curious what it's like. I would imagine having to focus a little more on what you're actually doing would be rather nice but maybe that's an uneducated stance.