Deaf world: Some debates that will never end...

I was reading DeafPulse (which you get the 10 most recent headlines on this blog), and reading other Deaf web sites...

CI, aka Cochlear Implant. It's a big thing in the deaf world. I guess that it is alike to a Christian seeing Satan in person. :)

I'm fighting all I can on behalf of my dad, and the last thing on top of many illnesses is deafness... it goes without saying, pun not really intended that I have to rely on Sign Language to get understood. Or words on a piece of paper, but even then you have to write in big letters, as his eyesight is also getting worse. Also a miracle that my dad was able to remember a few signs and to make use of them.

On top of other illnesses, it feels like the last straw. At least for me. But it's no use to get angered, frustrated, or anything. It's life as it unfolds, with the best and the worst and you have to take that.

One thing I notice how the world, so wide and infinite, gets narrower for him. While I have also my own 'bouts (I hear well, but decoding human speech is a nightmare for me, so I sometimes appear to others as if I were deaf), but I haven't realized what it means being deaf.

We're in an audible world, from the doorbell, the telephone, radio, even television, when all these audible infos become out of reach, you live in a strange narrowed world, because all those audible you depend on during all your life... are no longer there, and you realize the sheer void.

I had that in mind when I was reading several heated debates about CI. Whether parents who took decision on behalf of their children, or as a grown up, to go for cochlear implants.

For my dad, it's way too late of course, but I have been thinking that in the very audible world that we live in, if I were in that situation at my age, I'd seriously consider the option.

Which doesn't mean I'd stop using Sign Language, far from it, but I have to realize that 99% of the people around me, from friends to neighbours to colleagues haven't learned it. So I have very little use of Sign Language (but I continue to wish that Sign Language should be taught at school, just like other languages, because it *IS* a full fledged language, with its own culture. It's *NOT* a sub-standard language, just for the "disabled", with the double quotes! )

I'm a fervent partisan of "Vivre et laissez vivre". It's a French phrase to just say to let people decide for themselves. I feel in cases like that, there's no right or wrong choices to take. These are just... personal choices.

But in the deaf community, it isn't different than other communities. There are always some outspoken (?) people monopolizing as many means of communication as possible, and claiming high and low that we should all go their way.

When there's a language, there is a culture. There IS a deaf culture. The dilemma is when you are a minority, then you are in survival mode.

Incidentally, this is the debate we keep having in my province (Québec). Anyone who wants to understand the language debate there, the key to do so is to view from the angle that we're a tiny minority in North America, even in our own country. 24% of Canadians speak French. Stated otherwise, that's 76% who does NOT speak French, and the numbers have been steadily declining since Stat Can began to do statistics, a hundred years ago...

So I see in the deaf community the same patterns of self-defense. The debate against CI is also that. It is perceived as removing people from the deaf culture, which is not entirely false, but it isn't entirely true.

It is my understanding that the deaf culture while being a minority and having to beg from the majority for its needs, is far from going extinct.

The geek in me, who sees technology progressing, I have to say: Who could have thought a few years ago that there would be plenty of "vlogs", video blogs, people signing merrily in ASL? there are web sites in ASL, and already movies in ASL? Who would have thought there would be plenty of materials on the internet to feed things like DeafPulse?

Aren't these things... an expression of a *culture*, that is vibrant and dynamic? I would think so, and thanks to the technology, for providing a support for which a language can be transmitted. In this case, *visually* transmitted.

I was looking at the millions of channels on digital cable. I was joking a bit, but I am serious, what about an ASL channel? I'd sign for it right away. What about newscasts, game shows, sitcoms in ASL? There are millions of deaf and hard of hearing people across the US and Canada. Sorry, but closed captioning doesn't cut it.

There are TV channels that are on the air with an audience less than that. Besides, there are already linguistic channels, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, German.

I think it's a matter of time someone who has the money will come up with a nationwide ASL channel? (and put closed captioning for the NON-hearing impaired? ;) )

I'd be the first to sign up, that's for sure.

So it seems that debates like against CI are so futile and such a waste of energy... it's being at standstill while the world keeps moving forward.

What else to say, or sign for? PEACE and ILY? Maybe...

That's a way to sign Vivre et laisser vivre, I'd say...

-E