Reading online the 'explosion' of 'professional' deaf awareness areas, and then reading what they say to mainstream business, local authorities and other areas, I am frankly horrified at the flood of disinformation many of them are putting out. The bias from both sides of the hearing loss fence is so obvious we would need both to attend same seminars to get any sense of balance OR awareness. Who hasn't read "All deaf people sign..." or "All Hi need lip-reading and loop systems" ? (Or are old people !)
What is wrong with these two photos ? Both are used to raise deaf awareness... Both are opposed by either 'side' as misleading on identification.
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You get cultural awareness that plays down and even ignores deafness itself, in complete denial of their own disablement and railing against hearing to blame them instead.. or HI awareness that emphasises how the loss is disabling them and this is being challenged all the time, by mainstream and by the deaf. Two areas promoting awareness in direct contradiction to each other. Awareness ? With respect the 'proof' is in the pudding. There is little evidence awareness is working at all. Little wonder when the areas who sit there trying to take it in, do not understand where the bias is. As non-cultural deaf person I do not expect to be told I am not deaf because I don't sign well by an awareness person in front of hearing people trying to raise awareness, that isn't awareness at all, it borders on exclusion and exclusivity of view which we don't want mainstream to embrace. Not least, that is an entirely untrue statement.
Culture is not communication, sign language, speaking, writing, lip-reading is..... no-one cares about Milan 200 years ago, we do care we can't follow NOW. How is Milan awareness of need ? As soon as these awareness people start on that I just want out it is not relevant to awareness of support, even signed support. When they start the ramble about D/d I am bound to stand up and tell them that is irrelevant too and to stick to the need point.
I understand where the pro attitude comes from, but a lot is PC nonsense frankly, that is the 'hearing influence' in it, all the awareness THEY got, was from politically correct nonsense they either got online, or from the polarised deaf and HI sector extremes, but the only awareness that works is that undertaken by deaf and HI themselves, sadly I find many leave it to others, and this is where the misconceptions arise. Until we rid awareness of D/d we cannot move onwards at all.
Deaf people won't raise HI awareness, HI won't raise deaf awareness, so there is no unity of approach. We have an entire charitable support set-up designed not around differences and needs, but differences of political dogma. BSL awareness is not loss awareness, there is little emphasis on inclusion of others and the dismissal of deafness itself as an issue in pursuit of blaming others, and the relentless drive to prove deafness is no issue at all, is not going to help anyone, since many are living proof it is. Every support area divides into signers want this, HI want that, so if deaf awareness is to work then we need two people every time, one from each divided sector to state their case ? not cost effective either....
What we see is both sides taking pot-shots at each other for failing to capitalise a letter or something stupid like that. A recent statement by one charity highlighting a campaign about the real need for more access for the BSL person, was attacked for using a small d, then attacked for excluding HI by emphasising sign language. We don't want or need this input. Raising awareness by deliberately adopting 'sides' to support, is making deaf awareness a lottery and laughing stock, and no wonder after 15 years we are still trying to raise it after hearing gave up trying to sort our problems out of not including each other.
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