Partially hearing or profoundly deaf? Take your pick!
June 15th, 2009
I met someone today who says she is profoundly deaf and I was so tempted to have a discussion with her (but didn’t). You may ask is it that important? What bothers me is that we use terminology without understanding what it really means. Audiological terms are defined as what a person can hear with (not without) a hearing aid, but most people define themselves (in audiological terms) as what they can hear without a hearing aid. This is an incorrect use of these terms. Partially hearing (or partially deaf) indicates that with a hearing aid you have some useful hearing. Profoundly deaf means even with a hearing aid you will get very little benefit from it. Why is it important to be clear? Well, the first thing I would say is that it is not a competition. You don’t have to be “as deaf as you can” so as to prove that you are really deaf. It also puzzles work colleagues when you say you are profoundly deaf (as indeed you are without a hearing aid) then proceed to have a perfectly comfortable conversation or hear the fire alarm. It just doesn’t hang together and then we get into “well, she can hear if she wants to” which doesn’t help anybody. Let’s just be upfront and honest about who we are and accept there’s no need to pretend to be somebody we are not.
Absolutely spot on. I also think its terribly unhelpful that there is a range for each of the levels (mild, moderate, severe and profound) that 2 people could be severely deaf and yet at the extremes from one another; e.g. one is almost moderate and the other is almost profound.
What is particularly unhelpful is deaf people who have tremendous benefits from their audiological aids, telling the world that they are profoundly deaf and can hear. Just pointless really, blurs the whole thing. Evelyn Glennie maybe an example.
This is what really gets on my nerves: Questionnaires/forums where they then ask about your level of “hearing” without making it explicit as to whether this is with or without the audiological aids.
Roll on yr next posting…
I consider my self to be partially deaf as I do have some hearing with a HA. However, without the HA I am Profoundly Deaf.
Another expression that is coming into use recently is Hearing Assisted.
I have a feeling that there are a lot of deaf people out there who don’t fully understand the audiological terms. It wasn’t until around three years ago that I finally plucked up enough courage to ask the audiologist how to read an audiogram. Nobody had bothered to explain the terms beforehand and I always just used the term ‘profoundly deaf’ to describe myself because that is what I was told when I was younger. I continue to do so out of habit more than anything else!
As an aside, I hate the term ‘mild’ deafness. It implies that their deafness is not much of a big deal when surely it can still have a significant impact on a person?
Partially deaf or profoundly deaf is two things as pointed out.I think this doesn’t matter at times, especially that there are so many ways to work things out, it’s just a matter of choice.If we choose to be totally deaf then forever we will be but if we choose to get out of it we still can.As simply as this, life is a matter of choice, we are the one who can make all things possible if only we want to, we are the one who’ll never listen to anybody if we are sure that what we’re doing will benefit everyone and so we can choose what we want to hear and not to hear as they say.