Cochlear implants are an extremely invasive surgery that does NOT fully restore your hearing. Success rates very wildly but even at its best, your hearing is still bad. Sign language is the crutch and dead people already use it.

I minored in ASL and a lot of people who have had the surgery choose not to wear the device. The consensus was that it sounds too bad to be helpful - one person I knew who lost their hearing as a teen described it as (paraphrased) "sounding like a speaker in a tin can" and he had a LOT harder time tuning background sounds out.

That said, I dropped out of the program because the teacher for the non-language classes was fanatical about deafness being a disability and I completely disagree.

It IS a disability...but don't think negatively of people who are getting by just fine without getting their head cut open. Cochlear implants are option for some but there's a lot of good reasons to dislike them.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's entirely a matter of what the disability is depriving you of, and if the intervention provides enough to be worth it.
It's dishonest to say that deafness isn't taking something away.
Where you have to do the radical thing you're proposing of "talking to the affected people" is when you're trying to find out the impact of what's being missed, the value, and how intervention would change that.

I'm not deaf, so I don't get a say in how cochlear implants are received by the deaf community. Most I can do is try to understand and ponder edge cases.
What's the best course of action if you can't be near a proper deaf community and a hearing couple has a deaf child?

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just to reiterate, I DO think deafness is a disability. I'm just saying it's very reductive to compare cochlear implands to either of those things. And the big debate about them is because they get pushed to parents as THE solution for their deaf child when that's often not the case.

Parents of deaf children should learn sign language which is pretty easy compared to verbal language and get familiar with the ADA (if in the US) because schools and government buildings are required to provide accommodations.

With a bit more precaution than a hearing person, deafness is not nearly as debilitating as blindness - you can get by in the world just fine

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

And just to be clear as well: I was agreeing with you and just expanding a little bit. :) The hearing world doesn't really get a lot of say in the opinions of the non-hearing world.

Yeah, no matter what if you have a deaf kid you should learn sign or you're kinda crud.

I think my main "concern" would be less on school and government accomodations, and more the culture aspect.
If you're in someplace like New York, you'll probably be able to find a place in a community where they can have deaf friends, teachers who sign natively and all that stuff. You'd probably be able to find someone who has been in the childs position and get their perspective. Probably several.
If you're in someplace that doesn't have that, I think it's a much more difficult question. Being in a situation where you'll have limited options for who you can communicate with via sign and, while doing their best, teachers who have limited resources to convey lessons, and generally much less community you can communicate with easily is a situation where I can see someone having the weigh those realities while not being fully able to take the feedback of other deaf people.