So my main point is specifically to when you can only can call for something like there are a lot of restaurants where you have to call for reservations but what tool do you use?

Hi all
I’m looking for opinions on a recent interpreter experience I had.

Earlier this week I attended a live show of a comedy podcast I enjoy. They secured two interpreters for me for the show. The interpreters themselves were great. They were super clear and really helped me with the show. They were interpreting for four different people and truly did an incredible job.

My issue is that one of the interpreters brought their wife. The wife would not stop talking throughout the entire show, to the point where people on the podcast subreddit are complaining that they can hear her in the live recording and it kind of ruined it for them. I already had a poor opinion of her when she said “oh I wish I knew sign language” to me and my husband before the show when we were getting acquainted with the interpreters. (I get easily annoyed by this sentiment, there are so many resources to learn ASL and ASL is clearly a huge part of your husbands life and would be an easy thing to practice with him, but whatever).

How common is it for interpreters to bring people to shows they are hired for? How do you guys feel about them doing so? Am I right to be annoyed at this even though it didn’t impact the interpreter doing his job and it was really more just her behaving poorly?

edit: I’m from England :)
I have profound hearing loss in my left ear with a cochlear implant and moderate-severe in my right ear with no aid.

I tell everyone, family, friends, work, uni, doctors, audiologist to use OTHER means of contacting me and if you HAVE to ring me, make sure to send an email or text message with all of the information afterwards.
No one listens to me!!!

I’ve just come off the phone with a new job and they were telling me all this information and I’ve no idea what he’s saying!!! I have told them in advance and multiple times that I am deaf!
Now I am panicking because he said some important things as I was able to catch him say things like “make sure to do this” but I have no idea what he wants me to do!
There’s no other ways to get in contact unless I ring him again.

Just looking at the screen where someone is ringing you gives me panic attacks!!
Listen, the bluetooth features are amazing, they are great for people who I know, who I’m used to their way of speaking, their accents, mannerisms but I’m useless with anyone else.

I’m a HoH college student. I never learned ASL, so I use CART (real time captions) in class.

Every time there’s a group assignment, I have to tell new people that I have trouble hearing, and then I have to explain that I’m using captions. Sometimes people start asking me how the captions work, and then they say silly things because they want to see it show up on my screen.

I’m not offended that my classmates are curious, but it gets tiring saying it everyday. I just want to study like everyone else, I don’t want to hold an entire QnA.

So tonight I (36f) went to my first event. To say it was overwhelming is an understatement. (Little back story) I've been deaf for about 10 years but at the beginning, I was so much in denial. It took me a good 5 years or so to embrace and accept. I'm still learning asl. Doesn't help that my family won't accept that I'm deaf and still speak to me. (Side note: i can speak, so that doesn't help either) .... Does it get easier if I keep going to events?? Or should I try something smaller so I'm not overwhelmed

I am a 20-year-old Brazilian woman who is deaf/HoH. Well, a good part of my father's side of the family is also deaf/HoH; I was born with progressive hearing loss of unknown origin and I had surgery at age 5 and will probably have another one. I recently had an audiometry test, and my hearing had worsened significantly compared to the last test two years ago. This came as a huge blow to me, and I’ll explain why. To start with, I never received support at school—except during high school—and my hearing impairment was always treated as a matter of how much effort I put in, as if that alone could magically fix everything.

My father has the same condition I do and has currently lost all hearing in one ear, yet throughout my life, he was always very harsh about my inability to hear—to the point where my ENT doctor had to call him out on it. My father used to scold me (and still does) and cover his mouth while speaking, making lip-reading difficult, as if that would somehow restore my hearing. I don't blame him, though; that’s simply how he was raised—as a 50-year-old man from the countryside. But the point I want to make is that my family doesn't "belong" to the Deaf community; instead, they view their impairment as something terrible, because that is how *they* were treated.

My grandmother never even told my aunt that she wears hearing aids. She is a devout Pentecostal, so I grew up hearing some pretty heavy things—like "your hearing difficulty is a hereditary curse"—which caused me to internalize terrible things about myself and my hearing. My oldest aunt doesn't use oral communication either, and my grandmother makes all her decisions for her; furthermore, she doesn't know LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language) because, according to my grandmother, God will make her hear and speak again—and her doctor even claims that learning sign language would make her "spoiled" or lazy.

Well, you’ve seen the chaotic environment I grew up in (and yes, I go to therapy.); all my life, I’ve had to bend over backwards to fit into the world and struggle to make others understand me. The result? Years of bullying and social exclusion, because people hate having to repeat themselves. I started wearing hearing aids in late 2022, and that social aspect improved significantly.

The problem, however, is that my hearing has deteriorated sharply in a short time: two years ago, it was conductive, but now it’s mixed—I went from 43 dB in one ear and 46 dB in the other to 50 dB in both. To make matters worse, my hearing has suddenly deteriorated significantly over the last few days—I don't know if I’ve suffered sudden hearing loss. The point is, I’m losing my hearing at a frightening rate.

When I got the audiometry results, I was devastated—not because I hate the condition itself, but because I’m terrified of going through everything I endured in childhood all over again. I might have to learn LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language), and that’s fine, but the realization that the world is going to hit me even harder makes me feel like I’m grieving while still alive. And as I mentioned, I have no connection to the Deaf community, which makes me feel isolated; I have no one to talk to about this, and my family treats my pain like a joke. Honestly, I don’t know what to do or how to cope with this. I’m sorry for the long post, but I needed to vent somewhere.

[Skipping long explanations ..]
I use Apple's FaceTime (on a laptop) with a Deaf man, who has voice-to-text captions on FaceTime at his end, with lipreading, to understand what i say. But his speech is really hard for me to understand (and sadly I don't know ASL .. starting to learn). What tech could we add so he can communicate better with me?

Do we need to just use texting? That loses the face to face feeling, as FaceTime and texting don't fit well.
Thanks for any ideas

I'm so relieved to find that my therapist is involved in a large study trying to figure out why the Deaf community has such a high incidence of sexual abuse within it.

Recently I was bullied (I won't revise my terminology!) on here for saying that 50%+ of Deaf women and men have admitted to being sexually abused or raped.

My therapist and I talked about the Gallaudet rape fraternity HOEZ and how traumatizing it is to be mass raped by these men. They're upperclassmen who don't want to betray their image but who hunger for careers within the hearing community, my HOEZ rapists all told me, and they target intelligent, bew "hearie" female Gallaudet students before we have had time to recognize their faces.

Why do Deaf people want so badly to protest that Deaf people don't rape and secually abuse each other at a higher incidence than the larger, typical, non-fundamentalist hearing population?

Why do so many otherwise intelligent Deaf people here on Reddit refuse to accept and discuss the truth, which includes "if you haven't been raped by a Deaf person, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen often!"?

I have just barely survived two years of terror bevause Joey Haynes/Lynn Ford and Ricky Taylor told me I don't actually have any evidence that I was raped, and that I can't be an artist, I have to stop writing, and my jewelry is so insipid I need to quit making it, and the other pushback I've gotten as a survivor. My mother has turned my family against my children. All of this so she doesn't ever have to deal with being the person who forced me to stay and be raped at MSSD and Gallaudet for 4 plus years.

Being criticized and even silenced here in r/deaf as a rape survivor, my hearing and deaf counselors, therapists, and other workers, say, doesn't mean that I wasn't raped by Deaf men and boys who enjoyed passing me around knowing my mother didn't care to help me. They say it means that you don't want to face reality and that it's like a family defending the incestuous person to the child who's been molested.

I was sitting on my kitchen counter two weeks ago in the middle of the night with a knife thinking I really had to leave the world and makw peace with never being a writer or able to help change the world...

...when I realized that the people who support me would wake up and find me dead, and wish their mom weren't dead, and never really get over losing me when I fought so hard to get their abuser out of our lives this summer.

So, really, my therapist is working on this study. What do you all think your attitudes that "it doesn't really happens" or "it's so rare we can't let hearing people believe we are a bad community by allowing any public discourse on the matter" mean in the face of a very real study being carried out by Deaf mental health professionals that says otherwise?

Are you too obstinate to look at the facts, and admit you're just being defensive, wanting to protect an OPINION, or a FEELING OF BELONGING where people are sometimes very kind, not the truth?

Hello, I’m Silas and I’m an 18M Deaf individual I’ve been Deaf since birth and I wrote a poem about how I at least feel like being deaf is like in comparison to many stereotypes. I thought this would be a good community to share it in!
Just an FYI, I am only okay with English grammar, I’m not looking for writer’s critique, I’m just sharing an art to my community, so please just enjoy!

“I reside in the world of rules, of disease, and of normalcy. Sound, all I have known, sound, all I felt, is the dance to my identity. Judgement, foreseen medically; misunderstood tragically, I yearn for the conscience of gifting my reality. In dull eyes, the vision of normalcy, lives the lie of my lack of, the absence of relationship with vibrations. Colors travel and hum through my bones in my universe of glistening lights and impulses. I tangle myself into them, becoming whole, myself. My canvas, sipping it all in, absorbing the light, and communicating every need of the world to the universe.

The environment of expression, landscape in the eyes of all, and the intimacy of conversation, sought more than what those absent from the vibrations contain the capacity for. What seeks you to truth? The lie of a million, my lack, and my medical difference, or the sensory overload lack of for the grounding connection? I stand, weep, expel air from my lungs and drink your love all in the movement Mother Earth begs for, just as the universe intended. Interruption, silent rules, and rigid communication, realize, is it not you who is lost?

I seek to understand, my stance on this planet, less in your standards yet more in what those long for, are the standing yet conflicting normalcies of existence. Within what I’m meant to feel and touch and in the sought reality, hear, I am capable of all, yet in the capacity for the neuroplasticity of my sensory, more, not less, than the normalcy. Thus, concluding, my impairment is a gift from the universe, reminding me, that I am one with all means equal.”

(I am not sure if this post is acceptable. If it isn't, could someone lead me to who could help us? Please & Thank you!)

Hi everyone!

My name is Patti and I'm the new President of my school's ASL Club, and we've struggled for about two years to come up with a logo for our club. I thought reaching out to the Deaf community would be a great way to seek advice and hopefully commission a Deaf artist.

Our club has funds available for the project, but the budget would need to be discussed with the club and the artist.

One important note: the logo would need approval from both our instructor and the school, so approval isn't guaranteed. The logo can be in grayscale, as we can add our school's colors ourselves.

I'd appreciate any advice on approaching this respectfully. Is this a reasonable request, and is there anything I should keep in mind?

Thank you!

(Note: this is not me looking for praise as a hearing person. Rather, I’m curious to know if this thing my friend said is a widely felt sentiment among others in the d/Deaf community)

I was recently texting with a Deaf friend from college (she was HoH in college and lost the rest of her hearing a few years later). We reconnected after a decade or so, and I let her know that whenever we next see one another (we don’t live nearby), my ASL is kind of rudimentary, so I ask for her patience with my signing. Her response was to explode with joy at the fact that I as a hearing person would know any ASL or make an effort to sign with her at all. When I expressed embarrassment, saying that I feel awkward that she’ll have to do extra work to understand what I’m trying to say and it will slow down the conversation (compared to what, I’m not sure. Writing things down? She uses her voice but I wouldn’t force her to lipread) she said it didn’t matter and expressed that her feeling about me learning was a sentiment shared by most Deaf people - I’m curious to know what others feel about this. Do you agree?

So I was born with hearing loss due to a birth defect and have been slowly losing my hearing over the years (I’m almost 20 now and need hearing aids). As a child, due to that same defect, I was unable to talk/make noise until I was old enough to get corrective surgery and YEARS of physical and speech therapy to learn how to talk. So before that, I used sign as my main form of communication.

But here’s the thing: my parents were both older and the children of immigrants. They were very much of the mindset of “if our child is different it will be a burden” so the moment that I started being able to make noise, they stopped using sign with me and pushed me to learn to talk—I still have trouble speaking clearly all these years later and have lost my knowledge of sign language. I also wasn’t allowed hearing aids until I turned 18 and could choose for myself because my parents rather tried for every corrective surgery the doctors could think of, even ear drum reconstruction (which I told them I would not get done).

Anyways, in the past year I’ve been trying to learn ASL as my doctors say I may lose almost all of my hearing once I get older and I’d rather know sign now then try to learn it then. I’m taking classes in college and have gotten okay, I know I still need more practice, but this is my dilemma: I can’t have a single conversation with someone hearing where I’m not constantly asking them “huh?” Or “what did you say?” And I have accommodations to have captions and to sit up front in class to hear my professors, and all that jazz. I’m the only HoH person in my school’s ASL society and we work with our school’s ASL Professors to try to get more people involved in the program/aware of deaf culture, but at my every chance to volunteer or spread awareness, my professors say I’m “not Deaf enough.”

I understand that my experience isn’t the same, but it’s not like I’m hearing just because I stumble my way through conversations (I use context clues or lip read about half the time if I’m not constantly asking people to repeat themselves) and I understand there’s a culture side to growing up deaf or with a deaf family member that I won’t have, but it’s not as if I had the same childhood as someone hearing either.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else who’s HoH or who’s lost hearing later in life feels the same way. Perhaps it’s just my Professors but it feels like there’s some kind of bar you have to reach to be accepted. I mean, do I have to wait until my 30s or 40s when I’m projected to have lost the majority of my hearing? I’m trying to learn and I don’t want to be rude, but it just becomes frustrating when I can relate to so many of the problems around not being able to hear like everyone else and yet I’m told I’m still not Deaf enough to participate in deaf events/try to find a community with people who face similar struggles.

My friends and family are learning sign because they know it will be necessary to be able to communicate with me once I’m older. My sister surprised me by having taught my nephew my sign name while I was away at college. I have days where I get tired of my hearing aids and just either sign at people out and about or am able to have short convos with my friends if we’re in a quiet place. I have an app to give me captions when on phone calls because it’s hard to hear over the phone. All of these things just make me feel so isolated from the Hearing community but when I try to go to the Deaf community (particularly in my school) it’s like I’m suddenly not qualified enough.

I suppose part of this is me venting, but I’m genuinely curious if anyone else has felt this way/is there anything I can do to remedy this? I’m trying to get better at sign but it’s just so frustrating when all my experiences are deemed inadequate just because my proficiency at the language isn’t there yet.

I know I'm hard of hearing and got blue tooth type hearing aids. I wear these pins/badges on my work apron, to let people know I'm hard of hearing and know ASL, so they're aware and speak clearly to me. But there's few times I misunderstood people or didn't understand them clearly. I have this Transcribe App, but I don't want to be wasting time to find it on my Iphone and have it ready, are there other Apps that's ready to use on the IPhone? We don't really do meetings at work, except during the holidays, for fun events. That when I struggle a bit, cuz those sitting bit farther are hard for me to understand well. I wish there's a way I can get ASL Intepreter, but having a job coach from this other program, it would be confusing to have 2 people their w me. I joined this new program called EDD GLAD, they're helping me to find jobs, and they know ASL. The other program I'm in, are all hearing and for special needs people, feel like I am in a wrong program or something. So yeah, any better apps I can use on my iPhone besides the Transcribe App? Even a few time at animal shelter volunteer orientation, I struggle to understand during the orientation. It like I need a better accommodation or something (that why even when I volunteer at this animal shelter, I avoid porgrams that use phone and walkie talkies, and limit interaction w people)