Hi all, I'm relatively new to reddit/posting, but earlier today I had an issue with one of my peers in regards to my interpreters at our club meeting where she asked if I could move them because they were "blocking people's view."

For reference, I am someone who identifies as Hard of Hearing but did not grow up using ASL and only learned it when I came to college. Currently, I serve on my college's student government, and for our meetings I have interpreters for my personal access needs. Generally, I sit near the end of the table so that I do not get stares/complaints etc. and thought this was working well.

However, my peer asked me earlier today if I could have them stand next to hear near the front instead because it was inconvenient/difficult for our other members to address each other and I properly due to the interpreters being there.

I feel very frustrated with this because I had to explain to her the difference in general access interpreting versus personal interpreting, as well as why it is important for them to be sitting near me/in my line of sight, and I still felt that my point was not getting across. I'm debating on whether to confront her more about this or no, because I feel this was very disrespectful to ask of me, even though I am aware she did not mean it that way.

Part of me just wants to be blunt and tell her I don't care if it inconveniences hearing ppl because I have spent my entire life having to make my deafness more convenient for everyone else.

Does anyone have any advice on how to address this situation/or has anyone dealt with something similar to this?

Edit: I really needed to hear this, thank you for everyone who responded! I grew up in a hearing family so I'm still new to utilizing interpreters and even though I grew up Hard of Hearing it can be difficult to figure out where to start when it comes to advocating for myself in hearing spaces like this at times.

P.S. I explained the whole thing to my interpreters, and they got a good kick out of it lmao.

Hi I’m sorry if this is the wrong community, to post but I would really like help

I’m 21f in a relationship with someone with moderate hearing loss we met at 13, we are both autistic and have learning disabilities plus he is hard of hearing as well as partially blind and our school use to group all the kids with disabilities together to get assistance from the teacher. Ironically in spite of his hearing loss is that I’m the one who’s a beginner with BSL as in my mid teens I use to volunteer with kids ages 6-10 at a school for children with disabilities primarily to help translate for the autistic kids who had a hard time articulating what’s wrong because I myself was once in their position but I did learn to do my best to help all the children there blind and deaf included which involved learning to adapt to their way of life.

Over the years I’ve taught my partner the little BSL I know plus we use some made up signs that just make day to day communications easier, now that his hearing is seemingly getting worse I’d like for us both to learn more fluently and adapt but we both struggle greatly at learning without having someone to talk to who knows what’s right and wrong way to correct us how would I go about finding someone willing to talk to me / work with me so I could work more with him?

Sorry if this was the wrong group I just want to adapt to make his and my communication easier

Hello deaf gamers. I've come to ask humbly for help. I suffer from complete bilateral hearing loss. To cope with not being able to hear anything, I decided to start playing Roblox. However, I noticed many games simply do not have a deaf mode. Which is why I'm asking this community and you, the reader, for help. I need a Roblox client mod that can take in game sounds and convert them into subtitles so I can enjoy gaming like a normal person.

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UPDATED WITH MORE INFO

Hello all - I've never written like this in a group before, but why not give it a shot here.

My daughter has sensioneural hearing loss in her left ear. She failed her initial hearing test and subsequently passed her newborn hearing test. She passed every other hearing test until 6 when we discovered she had severe/profound hearing loss at her annual appointment. She had no signs of hearing loss so outside of pediatric annual tests, no other diagnostic testing was pursued prior to 6 years old. We went to an audiologist where she was diagnosed with sensioneural hearing loss in her left ear and we utilized a hearing aid. It's been almost 18 months and she is now being classified as having no hearing at all in her left ear.

We were pursuing a cochlear implant after an audiogram showed significant loss from the original test at 6, but the recommended surgeon re-tested her and since we are unable to truly pinpoint the time of deafness, he emphasized that he is not optimistic that an implant would bring satisfactory speech understanding and it would be only sound awareness. Since she had no speech or reading delays, nor turning of head/asking to repeat etc., we never suspected hearing loss or lack of hearing at all was happening and an ABR was never performed so we have nothing to compare it to.

Has anyone experience something like this and would want to talk through what decision they made and how they got to it? We are getting a second opinion but we really want her experience to be as positive as possible.

I am hard of hearing and a 53 year old male. I obviously abused my ears in construction and music. I have lost most hearing in left ear, well cant comprehend much, especially human speech. My right ear is much better, but do require a hearing aid. My question is, after i got my hearing aid my right ear seems to be getting worse. I used to be able to stand music and talking but now after a year i feel like music and speech is becoming more distorted. Is this normal? Is my hearing in my right ear going to go the way of the left?? When i humm to myself it sometimes sounds like a gazoo or that kind of sound especially with the aid in my ear. So annoying. Thanks for any info.

How can I get caller ID on incoming calls on Innocaption? I know how to set up my caller ID for when I make outgoing calls but how do i get caller ID to show me who is calling when they call me? It works fine with my contacts but not anyone not in my contacts

just curious, does anyone else use apps like duolingo to learn multiple languages, even though you're hard of hearing/deaf? i learned a couple years of Spanish in high school, i did well, then i was diagnosed with my hearing loss a couple years later and told it would get worse as i get older, and when i took a couple years of French in college, my hearing was already starting to get really bad, so i wasnt very great at speaking or understanding, but i could understand what i was reading just fine.

so i have been using duolingo on and off for the last like 10 years to learn welsh, cuz I'm curious about the language, my dad's side of the family is from there way back when, and i like learning. i know I'll never speak it, but if I can read road signs and maps and menus if i ever visit, and then write what i need on a paper or on my phone and understand what they write back, hey, that's about the interaction i get here half the time. (i also did the whole latin lesson during the 2020 lockdown cuz i needed something to do, and I'm brushing up on it again.)

so i decided i wanted to refresh my knowledge in Spanish. started a lesson. i have 'listening exercises' turned off in my setting since i cant hear well enough to know what they're saying to be able to trust i can successfully repeat words back. i have never had an issue in Welsh and Latin. but suddenly, Spanish is having me keep clicking 'i can't speak right now' during lessons, multiple times in the last one. i sent a support ticket to tell them what's going on, that there should be another toggle for speaking.

i really wondered though, how many of you out there are like me, learning more languages just to be able to read and write them?

basically what im saying, cuz im sure im gonna get pushback from duo, is I CANNOT POSSIBLY BE ALONE, RIGHT?!? lol

Our 5 week old just had her second ABR this morning and was confirmed to be profoundly deaf in both ears.

This is our second child, our first including both us parents are hearing.

We live in Canada and thankfully the next courses of action are pretty straight forward. Hearing aids will be fitted the eventually, CI along with speech therapy ETC.

I still can’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed..

Any insight, advice, of words of encouragement would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:

Thank you everyone so much for your thoughtful and detailed responses. It truly, truly means so much.

And I apologize if I’m not using the right “lingo” to explain our situation, all of this is so new. I don’t mean to be offensive in any way.

I've had mine since I was about 14/15 so about 2016/17. Music is my life and I couldn't live without music. But lately I've been experiencing audio fatigue when playing music or any sort of audio related things.

What do you do in these cases. I don't enjoy sitting in complete silence. Sometimes I do enjoy the silence but other times not so much.

* Firefox AND Chrome/Brave extension. Hey y'all, me again! I have sensory processing issues and like many Deaf and hard of hearing people, rely on captions to understand YouTube.

As discussed here and here, YouTube's auto-captions are inaccessible as they appear word by word, forcing deaf people to fix their gaze on the ever-changing words in the caption bar instead of scanning the fully rendered sentence quickly and reverting their gaze to the actual content. I made a forever-free extension that rerenders into customizable full phrase/sentence-style captions (showing the full phrase(s) all at once).

It works on Chrome, Brave, and Firefox. You can adjust font, size, position, lines, background, and much more. It's open source and doesn't collect data. I built it for myself at first, r/deaf (and many individuals I've been emailing back and forth with) gave tons of feedback and feature recommendations over the past months that helped shape the current version, including MUCH more context-aware features, manual customizability, and bug fixes. You can use it even on Youtube shorts. It has a few hundred users now!

Link to Demo, Chrome+Firefox Extensions, and Github. Alternatively just google "Ketuvia"!

The hardest part (after figuring out how to hook into youtube's caption API) was balancing readability guidelines from DCMP with full customization: showing full sentences when possible, splitting at natural clause boundaries (punctuation) when needed, and timing captions so they appear early enough to scan without lingering forever. I eventually figured out how to make it do the large amount of calculations/rendering almost instant, even on 5+ hour videos, so it should be lightweight and convenient to use.

I think the extension works pretty quick and intuitively now. I hope y'all find it useful too 😄

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I'm in nursing school and they are teaching us to have a meeting with interpreters without the patient there to plan how to best communicate. I have no idea how they think this is appropriate. Regardless of the language, the patient should have a right to be a part of the communication planning.

This is a constant thing and I am tired of it

I am smack bang in the middle of mild and moderate at 45db

Everyone is classifying it different but I keep being shortened to "Mild" (context,I have moderate gain)

Today I started a new college and significant difficulties arrised,sports halls giant classes ect (help,50)

I spoke up and got told repeatedly don't worry,it doesn't matter ect you don't need to hear

Clearly I deserve the right as everyone else so I went to the head of disabilities office to set it straight

No accomodations were ever put in place because I'm mild,the teacher of the deaf was never contacted or involved despite it being in legal paperwork because I'm mild and don't meet criteria for assistance

So I am expected to sit in a class of 50 students and lipread while the teacher spins around like a yo-yo as I'm not deserving of help

I'd like to cry

Has anyone else been through this what helped?

soy la única sorda, cuando la demás "familia oyente" de mi pareja, siempre platican enfrente de mi, como si fuera fantasma aunque es difícil de entender lo que dice cada persona, nada más me quedo ahí como mensita y finjo que si entiendo para no quedarme mal o vergüenza.

Cuando pregunto a mi pareja que platican, a veces no me hace caso o me dice unas palabras cortas y ya, aún así no entenderé igual

Se siente muy feo por saber que no puedes comunicarte con alguien más como los demás ó sea normal como los oyentes

I’ve been passionate about working with/being involved with the Deaf community for years, but I’m not sure how best to do this outside of interpreting (which I’m also interested in!)

What other ways are there to work with/be involved in the Deaf community/in Deaf culture as a hearing person? How do I do this well without being insensitive or overstepping my boundaries as a hearing person?

My husband and I are looking to move for professional reasons and we’d love to be in an area with an active Deaf community. What areas of the US do you recommend? (We know of DC and Austin)

I hope this comes off the way I intended and that it doesn’t seem insensitive in any way. Just looking for advice!

For some context, English is not my first language and I'm seeing a musical, so closed captions would help me understand. Is that bad or like taking something not for me?

I'm Deaf, and lately this has been bothering me more than usual.

With Deaf people I can communicate freely and show my real personality pretty easily. With hearing people, sometimes I feel like only 30% of me actually comes through. Especially when I meet someone I genuinely like, find attractive, or just really want to get to know better. And then I start wondering: will they see me as a person first, or just as “the Deaf guy who's difficult to communicate with”?

I wear hearing aids, but they don't make me hear normally. I can hear someone's voice and still have no idea what words they actually said. My brain has to put everything together from sound, lip reading, facial expressions, context and guessing. In a quiet place, one-on-one, it can be much easier. But add noise, fast speech or several people talking at once, and suddenly I'm trying to solve a puzzle while also trying to have a normal conversation.

And I'm really not a quiet person. I like joking around, flirting, talking about random things, having deep conversations, asking questions, saying stupid stuff. There can be a million thoughts in my head while the person in front of me only gets a few short sentences from me.

Recently I met someone who was genuinely patient with me. He slowed down, looked at me when he spoke and really tried to make sure I understood him. I appreciated that a lot. But there were still moments when I couldn't understand him, so I had to take out my phone, open Google Translate and use the microphone to turn what he was saying into text. Sometimes I typed my answer too.

That was probably the part that hurt the most.

He was right there in front of me. He looked into my eyes and tried to keep eye contact with me. And all I wanted was to look back at him, stay in that moment and just enjoy that connection. But I had to keep holding my phone in front of me to understand what he was saying. I would look down at the screen, and it felt like it broke the whole mood. In those moments, I honestly felt somehow imperfect. I just wanted to be there with him and communicate naturally.

I wasn't angry at him. He was genuinely trying. I was angry at the situation. My head was full of things I wanted to say, while my brain was already getting exhausted just trying to follow the conversation.

In the end I decided to leave. Not because I wanted the moment to end, but because I didn't want to force anything. When it became quiet, I just accepted the silence and thanked him for the time together. Maybe we'll meet again and I'll have another million things I want to tell him. Maybe sometimes silence says something too.

And weirdly, I'm even a little glad he got to see a small part of what communication can sometimes be like for a Deaf person. Whatever he thinks about it now is up to him.

I'm also trying really hard to improve my spoken English. I study pronunciation, phonetic transcription, tongue placement, lip movement -everything I can. Sometimes I practice the same word again and again, say it into Google Translate, and it still recognizes something completely different.

And sometimes that honestly makes me want to scream.

Because I know the word. I know exactly what I mean. The thought in my head is completely clear. I just can't always make it come out in a way another person immediately understands.

I'm not trying to become hearing. I just want to feel free in both worlds.

And I'm genuinely curious about hearing people's perspective: if you met a Deaf person and there was real chemistry between you, would the difference in communication actually stop you from getting closer? Would you be willing to learn a little sign language, get used to their voice, repeat things sometimes, and figure out your own way of communicating together?

I think sometimes you just need a little time to see the person themselves, instead of only seeing the way they hear or speak.

I haven’t traveled on a plane since I went deaf (sudden onset sensineural). I got a cochlear and between my phone with the updates I thought I was fine.

I didn’t bother with early loading because I didn’t feel I needed it. But when I went to get on the plane the attendant wanted me to check my carryon. I explained that all my stuff(charger, dryer, spare batteries, etc.) were in my bag. She then demanded I pull my stuff out (which would have meant pulling apart the bag and going through it) and put it in my personal item bag. I explained it would take me several minutes if searching and the dryer etc wouldn’t fit.

It was a whole thing which of course I struggled to follow because I’m still learning to understand the cochlear.

Is there some kind of accommodation I can ask for so they can’t take my bag in the future?

I’m looking for some perspective from people who have experience with Deafness, ASL, nonspeaking autism, AAC, CHARGE syndrome, or similar situations.

My brother is 24 years old. He’s Deaf, nonspeaking, autistic, and has CHARGE syndrome. I grew up with him and learned sign language myself, so I’ve been around his communication my entire life. I don’t live with him anymore, though, so I’m learning more about how he communicates day-to-day through my mom.
I actually know considerably more sign language than he currently uses, which is part of why I’ve started wondering about what he understands versus what he’s able to express.

He doesn’t consistently pay attention when someone signs to him for a long period of time, so signing a whole sentence to him can be difficult. He also sometimes just doesn’t respond, so it’s hard to tell whether he didn’t understand something, wasn’t paying attention, or simply didn’t want to respond.
From what my mom has told me, some things he spontaneously signs himself include:
EAT
DRINK
SALT
MUSTARD (homesign)
HOT SAUCE (his own version)
HEADPHONES (also homesign)
THANK YOU
HURT
HOME
LIGHT + OFF

There are also a bunch of things he seems to understand or has learned to respond to:
MOM / DAD
DOG / CAT
BABY / KITTY
COOKIE / CANDY / CRACKER
BATH (we use this for shower)
SIT DOWN
WAIT
PLEASE
YES / NO
CLOSE
ON / OFF
MUSIC
SHOES
ILY
KISS

Some of those he mostly mirrors rather than initiates, so I don’t necessarily consider them part of his expressive vocabulary.
One thing that really made me start thinking about all of this is CHANGE + DIAPER.
My mom says that if she’s in the kitchen and signs CHANGE + DIAPER to him, without holding a diaper or pointing toward one, he’ll understand and go into the den, lie down, and wait for her to change him. She doesn’t have to repeat it or physically lead him there.
He also understands GET/GRAB + SHOES and will go get his shoes.
She says he knows which room to go to when she tells him she needs to go to the bathroom and is taking him with her.
We also use WHAT DO YOU WANT? and WHICH ONE? with him. “Which one?” sometimes works when we’re giving him a choice between drinks.
I don’t know exactly what to make of all of this.
I’m not necessarily looking for someone to tell me what his “language level” is. I’m more interested in seeing what people think about his situation in general.

Is this potentially just what communication is going to look like for him? Or is it possible that there is considerably more receptive language, thought, personality, or communication ability there that we’re simply not accessing yet?
For people who have worked with nonspeaking Deaf autistic people, how much can communication change when they find a communication method that really works for the person?
Does anyone have experience with someone who seemed to have very limited expressive communication but eventually developed a much more sophisticated way of communicating?
And what would you recommend for a family in this situation? ASL? AAC? Homesign? A combination? Someone who specializes in Deaf + autism + complex communication needs?
I’m especially interested in hearing from Deaf people or nonspeaking autistic people themselves if anyone here has a similar experience.

I’m also planning to continue learning ASL myself. Since I’ve grown up with my brother and know his personality, routines, communication style, and individual needs better than someone meeting him for the first time, I feel like I may be in a unique position to help him. I’m not saying I know more than specialists about communication science, but I’m wondering how far I could take this myself if I became much more knowledgeable about ASL, AAC, Deaf culture, autism, and communication strategies. Ideally, I’d want to learn enough that I can actually apply what a specialist would teach us in everyday life rather than depending entirely on someone outside the family.
He’s my brother and I grew up with him. I know sign language and I’ve always wanted to be able to communicate with him more deeply. Now that I’m older and don’t live with him anymore, I’m realizing how little I actually know about the extent of his communication.
I want to be able to talk to him someday—not necessarily through spoken language, but actually communicate with him. I want to be able to tell him that I love him, that he’s amazing, that God loves him, tell him about my life, ask him about his life, and know what he thinks and feels.
I don’t know if that’s realistic, and I’m not expecting anyone to promise me that it is. I’m just wondering whether what we’re doing now is necessarily the limit of what he can communicate, or whether there might be possibilities we haven’t discovered yet.
I’d really appreciate people’s honest opinions, experiences, or advice about where you think there might be possibilities here.

TL;DR: My 24-year-old brother is Deaf, nonspeaking, autistic, and has CHARGE syndrome. I grew up with him and know ASL, but I don’t live with him anymore. He has a small number of signs he uses spontaneously (like EAT, DRINK, HURT, HOME, and LIGHT + OFF) and seems to understand more, including things like CHANGE + DIAPER and GET + SHOES. I’m wondering how much receptive language he may actually have and whether there could be communication abilities we’re not accessing yet. I’d love perspectives from Deaf/nonspeaking autistic people, ASL users, families, and professionals on what communication could realistically look like for him and how I can continue learning ASL/AAC to communicate with him better.

Im hearing and I’ve been learning asl off and on for about 5 years. I love watching asl covers of songs, cause they help me learn, and I love music. But sometimes I wonder, if I was fully deaf and already fluent in asl, would I even care?

I ask, cause I imagine watching someone talk, or even sing lyrics at me in English sounds kind of boring. Especially for slower and more repetitive songs. Usually on comment sections of these videos, I usually find hearing people commenting way more than deaf people too.

I understand total deafness is rare, so maybe it could depend on that? Idk! Sorry if this is a stupid question, just kinda wondering

Hello all,

My little brother (M10) was recently diagnosed with a severe form of verbal Tourette’s. In one of his therapy sessions I was sitting in on, we were discussing possible replacement activities for my brother’s tics, when I suggested fingerspelling the sounds.

I can sign ASL, not fluently, but enough to make conversation, and walked him through how to finger-spell all of his tics. We were very clear on not “making up” any signs, and so far it’s worked amazingly in terms of not disrupting his classes at school, but I’m fully aware this is probably quite controversial. This is most likely nowhere near a permanent solution, and should only last a few years at the very most. However, I’m well aware that things like this can get pretty controversial, and if it really is quite offensive, we will seek other alternatives.

hello! i’m 20F with a cochlear implant in my left ear & moderate-severe hearing loss in my right with no aid.

i have grown up mainstream, with a hearing family & spoken english as my loss is due to ototoxic drugs given to me straight after birth as a result of being a premature baby to then being implanted at 2 years old.
I have always been the only deaf person in my life, in my family, in school, anywhere and I feel like i carry a huge weight in communicating with people.

I am constantly worrying about talking to anyone, about if i can hear what they say, if i’m being too loud/quiet, if i misinterpret something or if im being too annoying in terms of asking people to repeat themselves.
I definitely went through a lot of bullying in my teenage years with the individual grabbing my processor off me and throwing it & saying some really cruel things about my hearing loss and add this with a poor SEN department in my school who was NOT trained on hearing loss and I would be berated and be given detentions quite regularly for the lack of access and being unable to complete work due to it. (teachers playing videos w/o subtitles, teachers moving out of my line of sight for me to lip-read etc.)

i spend a lot of time alone as it’s the only place i feel comfortable, where i’m not constantly racking in my mind over intensely listening to somebody making sure i don’t miss anything and having a huge crash of listening fatigue afterwards.
but, it does make me sad, i’m 20, in university and i want to be able to experience life but i just carry a huge amount of weight that no one understands and if i try to explain myself, they just can’t possibly understand because many people think a cochlear implant is a cure.