Audiogram

I can not tell exactly where I will be in five years. I can only aspire and hold my breath to say I will be well versed in the deaf community. Somewhere, whether that be a hospital, school, court room, or church, assisting deaf people to access their world. When I was in sixth grade I attended vacation bible school at my grandmothers’ church, were they taught motions with your hands to every song. I loved that concept, every time I got the chance I would sign the motions over and over. My mother…

The second location, a local church organization, provided an interpretation service for those who are Deaf and hard-of-hearing. This observation allowed for data to be collected on how interpreters communicated and interacted with Deaf individuals in a hearing capacity. There were two interpreters that took turns presenting translations for the church service, each one providing a different direction of data that was collected. One of the interpreters was a student in a learning experience and…

Living in the world today, the population rates are constantly rising, and so the world is endlessly being filled with millions and millions of people. Every individual person was born with their own purpose in life. Some individuals discover their purpose early on in life, and others may or may not discover theirs. The Deaf Smith County Crisis Center is a place that advocates for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and anyone else in need. I had the opportunity to complete my ten…

Gene Therapy Makes an Impact on Deafness Today’s scientific technology has increased; we now have different techniques and methods for saving lives, one being gene therapy. According to Scientific America, gene therapy is when you add a “new gene to a patient’s cell to replace missing” or broken genes. An interesting topic I encountered about gene therapy was, how gene therapy helps deafness. Deafness can be caused by many different reasons. According to Harvard Medical School, they stated that…

What is hearing loss and deafness? Is it the inability to hear sound? Or is it more than that? The answer will depend on who you ask. With regard to hearing loss, there are three main types. An individual with conductive hearing loss has the inability to hear due to any number of issues stemming from the outer ear. Sound waves are not able to pass from the outer ear to the inner ear, specifically the cochlea (a spiral cavity that looks like a snail shell that receives sound in the form of…

Deaf people are likely to enter therapy with the same problems as hearing people. However, there are many studies showing that members of the Deaf community experience health disparities due to language barriers, which contribute to lower health literacy1,2. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most physicians and psychologist are not adequately prepared to provide linguistically and culturally competent care for deaf patients3. Also, the deaf community experience many obstacles to get…

Raising a child is difficult task. Although times have changed and our society is more accepting than it used to be, intentionally bringing a child with a disability into the world is morally and ethically wrong. Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough are a deaf lesbian couple. They are also the parents of two deaf children. Sharon and Candy specifically chose a sperm donor that was deaf, and used his sperm to conceive both of their children. They chose this sperm donor because they wanted…

In Douglas Baynton’s “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” Baynton argues that the idea of disability was used in American history to justify discrimination. People with perfect health from the past viewed disability as a form of disease because of their “dysfunctional body”. Women, African Americans, and immigrants were viewed as disabled because they are “abnormal”; they don’t have the ideal body built and mind to be defined as “normal”. “Normal”, as Baynton…

Universal Newborn Hearing Screenings Over 50 years ago, audiologists, educators, parents, and medical personnel recognized and stressed the importance of early identification of hearing loss among infants. The understanding for a need for early identification of a child’s hearing loss has led us to the modern technology and assessment of hearing for newborns, most commonly referred to as the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS). In the United States, as of 2007, over 90% of newborns are…

Tom Humphries lost all of his hearing at the age of six from exposure to antibiotics. However, he was raised around hearing people. Both of his parents were able to hear. Tom entered the Death community while he was in college; his entrance wasn’t planed. It was more of an accident. He entered the Death community by learning the Death culture and being around other people who was like himself, but from different back grounds. Even though Humphries’ been death for most of his life, his…