#hearing impairment

[nonspeakingkiku]

A note on Kiku's deafblindness.

Kiku has hearing and sight but both are unreliable. Kiku is still figuring out what is hard, what helps, and what this means for Kiku. Kiku grew up thinking Kiku was sighted and hearing and knowing now, that that isn't true. That Kiku is blind and is deaf, are big. Very big and a lot to process.

When Kiku first started really questioning if Kiku was actually blind, really actually considering the possibility that that is true, a very nice lady whose son is deafblind due to CVI and CAPD reached out to Kiku, and listened to Kiku, and confirmed that Kiku's experiences sound like CVI, and that Kiku very well might be deafblind based on Kiku's experiences and even more important, she talked about the trauma that others with CVI and CAPD/Cortical Deafness have experienced, by growing up deafblind and not even knowing it. At first Kiku thought, Kiku doesn't have trauma from that... But Kiku does... All the things that weren't believed, or understand, or listened to. Glossed over. Explained away. Every time someone said: Just pay more attention, just listen, it's right there just look, we called you five times why didn't you answer.

Kiku does have trauma from growing up deafblind and not knowing it. Kiku is so glad that Kiku knows now. Glad that Kiku can accommodate self now. Can learn to rely on things that work better than Kiku's hearing and sight, because they are not reliable. Familiar things are sometimes easier, familiar things can be easier to see, familiar sounds or speech can be easier to identify, although not always easier to understand. Especially speech. Most of the time speech sounds like gibberish. Sounds are hard to identify, can't always tell where sounds come from. Unfamiliar things are worse. Unfamiliar places are a swirl of confusing color, unfamiliar sounds make no sense. And sometimes especially when stresed, overwhelmed, tired, or similar even the familiar is lost in a swirl of colors or sounds. Too many things too many sounds. Is that rain or something else? Someone talking or a sound on the TV. A passing car or something else. The more sounds the harder it is to tell. And if hearing can't see well, and if seeing, actually seeing processing what looking at, can't hear. Will be looking at something and realise halfway through someone talking that they talking and Kiku didn't hear half of it.

But Kiku is learning things to help.

White cane

Braille

ASL

Take break to focus listen, so hear better. Still hard. Still hear gibberish often.

Take break from use sight. Use screenreader. Use braille to make note for self.

Rely on tools that help and loved ones.

Learn more, always learn.

Remember what used to do to help (hand trailing, spend time by self in familiar place, dark, limit sensory input. Block background noise to focus using sight. Block visual distraction to help hear somewhat better)

And things want to learn/have in future to help.

More ASL.

Deaf culture

Protactile ASL

To use white cane well

Hearing aids

Other things.

This post is mostly for self. Just dumping it all out to help process.

Will bio family accept all this... Probably not. They didn't see Kiku's disabilities the first time. But also they not the ones matter, not really. Ones that do, chosen family. The ones who accept Kiku for Kiku, disabilities and all. And are learning to help Kiku while Kiku learn to help self.

Also if Kiku has any deaf, blind, or deafblind followers who have anything they want to share, whether that is their own stories, resources, art, ect. That would be great. Kiku probably should have had all this a long time ago, (community and awareness of self) but Kiku is glad do now.

Thank to anyone who reads this.

#kiku squeaks #blind #deaf #deafblind #CVI #CAPD #APD #hard of hearing #low vision #visual impairment #hearing impairment

[thecorvidforest]

i really miss when people used to put more effort into their captions, especially on youtube. it seems like ever since captions became auto-generated, most people stopped putting in any effort towards making sure they’re accurate. even in videos with multiple speakers and no facecam there will be no specification in the captions of who’s speaking, no audio description, no punctuation, and so many words just completely wrong. i miss accurate captions

#i can hear but damn bad captions make it hard to understand words & differentiate between voices #corvidforest #accessibility #inaccessibility #subtitles #disability #hearing impairment #hearing impaired #auditory processing disorder #apd

[olen-karhu]

You are not the victim if you have to "constantly repeat yourself" for your hearing impaired friend/significant other/family member/etc. You don't get to make them feel bad for not hearing you. You don't get to be passive aggressive.

#abelism #hearing impairment #hearing loss #deafness #hearing impaired #hoh #hard of hearing

[cripple-council]

• this user uses sign language •

[id: a dark purple userbox with a black border, to the left is a picture of the ASL sign for ‘i love you’ with a heart. to the right is a black text reading: “this user uses sign language”. /end id]

#cripple punk #crip punk #cripplepunk #physical disability #physically disabled #c punk #cpunk #sign language #asl #hearing loss #hearing impairment #hard of hearing #hoh #deaf #deafness #communication #this user #userbox

[hjellacott]

Disabled rant

So I've got an invisible disability, as they call it. I've scoliosis, and in my case, it means a whole shoulder blade is out of its proper place and there isn't a good solution but pain management and certain types of physical therapies, such as Feldenkrais, which can be really helpful, but are not covered by the NHS. Which means that for the most part, is something I wish I could cure and fix (contrary to other people who don't wish to change their disabilities or impairments, and say they "don't want to be fixed), but that I've come to accept I probably won't get to fully solve. I know I have to live with this and manage it for life. And the world isn't made for people like me.

Some disabilities or impairments are obvious. A person in a wheelchair, a person with a guide dog... And even though the world isn't made for them either, and they have tremendous challenges daily, at least a part of their problems and solutions are obvious. It doesn't take much thinking to know a person in a wheelchair will need a lift, nobody is going to try and push them up a flight of stairs and call them lazy fuckers if they ask for the lift.

My situation is different. You can't look at me and see my disability. Therefore, I am not treated with the prejudices and stigma other disabled people receive, I don't get pointed at or anything, but in the down side, people don't understand it when I need help and compassion and understanding. That it isn't that I'm lazy, it isn't that I'm being difficult... Is that I genuinely need to sit down more, have a chair nearby, be offered a seat in public transport, because I'm in chronic pain and sometimes I feel great, but sometimes I'm agonising, and I might even faint. I'm agonising and having to smile and offer my seat to a pregnant woman or an elderly person... and I will happily do it, but I could also use a healthy person offering me their seat now and then. But they won't. Because they look at me and only see a young lady who seems fine.

With Feldenkrais now for a decade, I'm now no longer normally in pain, but I've got to be really careful not to make things bad and end-up bed-ridden for weeks. Among other cautions and prevention things, mainly I need to take frequent rests, and even sitting down, sometimes I need to change position, or type of seat, or lie down. My spine, which is S shaped, basically can't hold me up for long. Can't do its job effectivelly. And even though scoliosis is a private matter, I've had to warn my every employer. And I've lost jobs for it.

Most cases, bosses and colleagues don't get it. They think I'm lazy, needing to sit down all the time, because my clothes cover the bad positioning of my shoulder blade. They think I'm exaggerating. They call me names. And I've taken it without complaint for ten plus years, first from classmates and teachers, then in work settings. Lost jobs, or have to quit them for medical reasons, and so on. My doctors aren't even sure I would be able to carry a successful pregnancy to term, but my fucker boss thinks I'm being a lazy, annoying tosser who needs to be sitting down too often.

Anyway.

In psychology, we have two aspects for disability. The medical aspect is the one that tries to "fix you", and focuses on what's wrong with you as a disabled person and what can be do with you or two you to help out. It points out your symptoms. I always feel slightly at war with some disabled people because they try to speak for all of us and say that the medical aspect is shit, that people shouldn't be trying to fix them, that there's nothing wrong with them, that it should only be the social aspect. The one that focuses on finding the problem in society (it is society that disables you, which is why we don't say people with disabilities, but disabled people as in, people who have been made disabled by the world), and adapt society to enable your existence, to put it simply. Personally, I think it needs to be a combination.

I think it is very much CRUCIAL to remember each disabled person is their own fucking individual. We can't really be grouped into one category and say OK, disabled people reject the medical focus, so let's stop pointing out their symtoms and just fix society. I think at the bare minimum, we should recognise main differences between people whose disabilities are invisible and people who have visible ones.

Many of us who are invisibly disabled, we have a physical impairment that, contrary to for example people with Down's Syndrome, we do really want to fix it. We want our medical issues to be researched more and investigated better and for treatments to become more accessible because they aren't. Currently the only treatment available in the NHS for scoliosis is physiotherapy (for pain management, and not necessarily effective) and surgery (involves having nails in your spine, a huge, risky surgery, and it won't necessary solve things completely). I tell people I've scoliosis, most people don't know what it is. So people like me, we do need the medical aspect, it's crucial. It's crucial to raise awareness, to let people know there are so many invisible disabilities, so many people smiling at you and agonising inside, and so, in the one hand, we need a big focus on the medical aspect and trying to fix treatments to fix us, but on the other hand, we also need a focus on the social aspect and building a more understanding and empathetic society that doesn't hurry to call people lazy fuckers if they need to rest more, that is not so quick to judge, that always thinks "hold on, perhaps they're disabled and I can't see it, let's be extra kind". Particularly in work places.

Whereas for visibly disabled people, there are so many kinds. If you've got autism or Down's Syndrome, you might not want to be treated like a sick person, because it's become your identity. For me, scoliosis isn't my fucking identity, I don't want it to be, but I imagine that when you're receiving BS day and night and being called retarded for having something like Down's, eventually you want to flip the table and own it and let it be your identity and something you're proud of it, and you don't want to be told you're ill, that something's wrong with you, you want society to just take you in and love you as you are. But then you've got deaf people or people with hearing impairment but not complete deafness, who perhaps would really benefit from being treated like people with a medical problem that needs solving, so that research can focus and money can be invested in finding new treatments to truly solve deafness. Just like we use glasses when our eyes are impaired (I also got that one).

This goes to show that what we need is a combination of both aspects. Yes we can't go around calling people names and pointing fingers at them and calling them ugly and being shit to them because they're impaired, we can't make people disabled by building a world that will always make them feel broken and not good enough.

We need compassion, understanding, kindness. We need society to change. But we also need for people to understand many disabilities are invisible. Many have degrees. For example autism is a whole fucking spectrum, and I've friends who have the kind where you're incredibly bright, bit like Sheldon Cooper, they'd never call themselves disabled, they don't want to be fixed or to be told something's wrong with them, they think they're better than you. But I've been a teacher at a school for students so deeply autistic that they didn't say a word ever, literally they'd be ill and vomiting and feverish and you had to play guess because trying to talk to them was like talking to a wall, even when using Makaton (some kids will really get good with it, but others cannot use it much either). And those kids do need people to realise something about them is different, that they need medical help and twice as much understanding and kindness, and for their symptoms to be understood. Because if their symptoms are not seen and understood as such, then they'll be judged wrong. Then people will slap them for the way they behave (and imagine slapping an autistic child!), whereas if people know it's deep autistic, a state of severe dependency, and that they didn't mean anything bad when they bit you, when they hit you, or when they start screaming, then they'll be kind and compassionate. And by remembering the medical focus, there'll be more medical research to make their lives better.

The main thing is every disabled person is their own person. Their own world. So when in doubt, don't assume someone's lazy or stupid, assume they must have some disability and don't ask about it. Just be kind, it's not hard. Be understanding. When some disabled people tell you they just want to be treated as normal and not be fixed, don't assume that's everyone. But remember and don't judge that some people really do need to be cured, and are begging for it. Don't generalise and put every disabled person in one same box and assume their needs and wishes are the same. Just ask them how they feel about it personally, if you're close to them to ask.

Think about it like with glasses, right? Sight impairment in an accepted disability common in society and we run to fix it. We all want to fix it. We'll have glasses or surgery. So by that logic, assume many disabled people want cures and want fixing if it's possible, but that doesn't mean they want to be treated like they're wrong or broken or less good, because they aren't. They simply have an issue, and we all have issues and problems and crap. They're impaired. Most of us have at least one little impairment, it's a normal thing, not abnormal. And then, also remember other disabled people don't want to hear a word about their symptoms.

And when your employee tells you they've got a health condition and need a specific thing, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST LISTEN, BE KIND, GIVE THEM WHATEVER THEY NEED TO DO THEIR JOB THE BEST THEY CAN AND DON'T DEMAND FUCKING JUSTIFICATIONS AND PRIVATE EXPLANATIONS.

#disabilities #disabled people #invisible disabilities #scoliosis #impairments #autism #down's syndrome #deafness #hearing impairment #visual impairment #blindness #glasses

[noyzinerd]

A 6-year-old girl tried to take the hearing-aid off my baby, in the library play area the other day, to get a better look at it. My baby was fine, in fact she didn't even notice, but the absolute horror on the mom's face 😱... She looked like she was about to shed all of her hair and skin and her soul was about to flap away from her body as a butterfly of mortification. Like she thought I was going to break out my phone and doxx her on the spot for raising an "ableist, racist, Nazi Youth". I felt so bad for this poor woman 😂.

Because when your kid tries to rip the hearing-aid off of a baby, that is definitely not a good look. 😅

I told the mother it was fine, that kids will be kids and that I knew her daughter wasn't trying to be malicious, that she was just curious.

Meanwhile, all I could think about was the meme I was going to make that would most accurately portray this woman's life at that exact moment:

It didn't end there, however.

The girl asked why my baby needed a hearing-aid, so I explained that it was because she was born with only one ear.

The girl, then, reached out and fondled the deformed, underdeveloped skin abnormality of my daughter's not-ear in wonderment and the mother just:

This poor woman fucking died 🤣.

(My daughter, however, was giggling because the girl's little inspection of her not-ear tickled.)

#a PR nightmare #political incorrectness #disability #hearing impairment #pc culture #tobey maguire #Meme #woke culture #My baby's too young to even realize there's anything different about her #Seriously it was all good 😁 the girls played puppets together afterwards #biracial #neurodivergent #minority and ethnic groups #spider man

[thundergrace]

October 17, 2022

Hearing aids for people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss will be available over the counter without a prescription or an appointment for the first time starting Monday, a move the Food and Drug Administration estimates could save consumers $3,000 per pair of hearing aids.

The FDA has finalized a rule allowing online and over-the-counter sales, and the White House says hearing aids will be available at major retailers, including CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Hy-Vee either Monday or later in the week. Nearly 30 million Americans – roughly one-tenth of the nation’s population – suffer from hearing loss, but estimates indicate only a fraction of those who could benefit actually use them.

#hearing aids #hearing impairment

[spooniestrong]

#spooniestrong #spoonie #hoh #hearing impairment

[malinastharlock]

More, more, MORE!

Video description:

White haired rebel dressed in 80's punk clothing: With a rebal yell she cried

Large angry extraterrestrial bipedal lobster doctor: more, more, MORE!

#futurama #zoidberg #why not zoidberg #billy idol #more #more more more #rebel yell #hearing impairment #visual impairment #some please send help #disney is holding me captive #they are making me make videos from memes to promote new shows #btw new Futurama episodes are coming to hulu #hulu #disney #🐭

[art-of-mathematics]

Now that my hearing is temporarily impaired I can witness how much difficulty hearing impaired and deaf people people may endure on a daily basis... And how socially isolating it is additionally. Whoa. Somehow hearing impaired people (and other people with sensory impairments) have my full respect and compassion! That is some tough shit, especially also in social regards!

Additionally, it is even worse to decypher the noise logically than usually with normal hearing, and sensory processing issues... it takes much more conscious effort to fill the gaps of information with logical reconstructions.

#hearing impairment #temporary hearing impairment #sensory issues #hearing loss #temporary hearing loss

[plentyoffandoms]

What I have in both ears.

Found out only a month ago I needed hearing aids.

#hearing aids #hearing impairment #hearing issues #sensorineural hearing loss

[dddemigirl]

I remember hearing on the news a few months ago (?) that there was going to be more affordable hearing aids in stores. Both of my parents really need them & they’re taking hearing tests soon. 🦻🏻

#alexa rambles #hearing aids #Walmart #affordable hearing aid #hearing impairment

[bigtransmoods]

Me: My boyfriend just talks quietly. Also me: *Gets told I had 50% hearing loss*

#hearing loss #deaf #disability #hearing impairment

[hearingcentre1]

Reputed hearing clinic in Toronto

Give yourself a new start with better hearing by Toronto Hearing Centre. Our audiologists offer the counseling and support necessary to improve an individual's quality of life through better hearing. We help both adults and children diagnose and treat their hearing difficulties. Contact our hearing clinic Toronto team for the best diagnosis regarding your hearing problems.

#Hearing Clinic Toronto #hearing clinic in toronto #audiologist in toronto #torontohearing clinic #toronotaudiologist #hearing #hearing difficulty #hearing impairment

[transgendergoblinfromspace]

Being hearing impaired fucking sucks occasionally but being down an ear completely and hearing loss in the other does mean I only have to hear 45-50% of the dumb shit that’s said around me throughout the day.

Sadly, I’m considering hearing aids again so I can go outside at night without having anxiety like I’m being hunted. 🙄

#i’m not prepared #it’s been so long since I had hearing aids #fuuuuuck #personal #hearing impaired #hearing impairment #hard of hearing

[2-dont]

New hearing post: alright so sitting in the car while my wife is grabbing stuff, nature and humanity sounds almost rhythmic against each other. May or may not be tearing up.

#personal #me #hoh #hard of hearing #hearing aids #hearing impairment