
Being deaf - sarenji
http://davidpeter.me/stories/being-deaf
======
mechanical_fish
_I could try to find a deaf girl. However, I don’t want my kids to have an
increased chance of deafness._

This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge
when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids
were fine.

 _Even if they come out hearing, we’d need to make sure they’re raised right —
who will teach them how to talk?_

Let me respectfully suggest that this is just untrue, a persistent myth about
language learning. Hearing kids learn spoken language just fine, even if their
parents don't use it. (Parents have a natural tendency to overemphasise the
percentage of the time that their kids spend listening only to them. ;) But
kids listen to _everyone_.)

One thing that does happen is that hearing kids of deaf parents become fluent
in both ASL and a spoken language. Which is not a problem. It is in fact kind
of awesome.

~~~
sarenji
_This sounds like a classic case of premature optimisation. Cross that bridge
when you get there. Thousands of other deaf parents have done so. Their kids
were fine._

Actually, you're right. Sometimes the girl I like is deaf, sometimes not. I
should be fine with kids either way, and put in the work to make sure they
develop right. I'm rethinking this entire paragraph. Perhaps I should have
said I don't _specifically_ search for a girl who is deaf, and then just left
it at that, or just removed it entirely. Love is love.

 _Let me respectfully suggest that this is just untrue, a persistent myth
about language learning. Hearing kids learn spoken language just fine, even if
their parents don't use it._

Some (old) studies had suggested otherwise, but you made me remember the
bilingualism argument, which is gaining traction. I do know that if you have a
hearing child to both deaf parents, it's very important to expose the child to
spoken language as much as possible. Of course, I hope I'm that kind of parent
:-)

Bilingual kids do have a lot of advantages over kids who only know one
language. I'd be very happy to teach my child, hearing or deaf, both sign and
English.

Thanks for the insightful comment.

~~~
ataggart
As a hearing child of two deaf parents, I'm one data point against the notion
that such a child's language skills are harmed. Sesame Street is a wonderful
thing.

------
edw519
Thank you for the wonderful post, David. Perfect for us hackers. In our world,
but not completely. With a human touch we often gloss over. And with plenty of
fresh data.

Now here's what to do: Have business cards printed up with 2 links (and
nothing else) on them, one to your blog post and one to this discussion
thread. Then hand them out as you see fit. The people you meet in real life
deserve to know this just as much as we have. I hope that helps.

Best wishes and no matter what else life throws at you, keep building!

------
citricsquid
The way he talks about office communication and missing out on things reminds
me very much of being a remote worker, I don't think I can begin to imagine
how frustrating it would be to be in the office and feel like you weren't
there.

A few years ago there was a wonderful post on somethingawful.com from a deaf
person who answered questions and talked about his life experiences, there was
hours and hours of content to read and it was really informative and
interesting, unfortunately it's hidden behind the archives pay wall now.

~~~
jyothi
That is an excellent point you bring up there: remote workers are very close
to being deaf. There are so many things you feel like expressing - small
things not worthy of a call or an even an email - a chat works but still not
the same effect.

Being a remote worker is like being both deaf and dumb.

I hope one day we would have the Cisco tele presence affordable in small
offices too
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQpBPUbNJcM&feature=fvwre...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQpBPUbNJcM&feature=fvwrel)

~~~
shakesbeard
I don't think this is accurate. As a deaf person you see when conversations
take place, and when you are excluded from them. As a remote worker you don't
get this consistent reminder.

You are correct, that it might be similar when trying to do small talk,
though.

PS: I work 100% remote.

------
Swizec
I know I'm echoing everyone, but this story was just _so_ profound I have
nothing to say. It's very rare to wake up in the morning, go on hackernews and
find something this worthy of attention.

You almost made me forget to eat breakfast. Thanks for the great read and I'm
glad to hear things are looking up for you.

Here's to hoping three years from now look as better than today, as today does
compared to three years ago :)

PS: to startup founders hiring foreign workers, they feel like this too. I've
seen it in the eyes of some people at some offices. Work on making everyone
feel immersed in the office culture. If you think you are, work _harder_.

PPS: to workers where foreign people are involved, it's _your_ job to make
them feel involved. I know it's easier to just do things normally. Make an
effort.

------
kentosi
Thanks for taking the time to share this story.

I'm not deaf, but I can very much relate to some of what you've said.
Especially the loneliness part.

I'm an English speaker who's spent the last year in France. I'm currently
working in a French company, and the spoken language is still VERY difficult
to follow (ie - when they use slang, jokes, etc). For six months, I've been
feeling like I'm in the shadows quietly sitting with my colleagues at lunch
and hearing them laugh at jokes while I'm still trying to figure out what they
were talking about with a lag of 10 seconds. It's frustrating, crushing, and
you want to just go and hide somewhere.

Yes I can ask them to repeat things, yes I can ask them to explain the jokes,
but it just makes me feel like dead-weight that needs to be dragged along.
It's frustrating beyond anything.

The advantage on my part is that I can get (and have gotten) used to the
language to the point that I now follow things quite well. And with time it
can only improve. I'm not sure how this will pan out for you, but I wish you
all the best. The fact that you're putting in the effort is in itself an
awesome thing.

~~~
davedx
Same thing here, but in the Netherlands!

I've noticed that I'm gradually getting better and better at understanding
what people are talking about. It's a long, hard task to get to the stage
where you understand the jokes and slang, but it is doable. Good luck! :-)

------
jeffool
Warning: A long meandering post, about multiple things, because my day job is
at a relay center, taking calls from/to deaf people.

I absolutely understand his fear of letting a relay operator help him here.
Now, obviously this fellow can write in English awesomely, and like any other
place my coworkers are great people and (the vast majority are) trying to do
their job well, so on paper you'd think it could work... But man, when it gets
ugly, it gets ugly. You never realize just how much conversations change when
a single "not", "un", or required inflection is left out. You know how us
hearing people may misunderstand a joke or reference in text/IM? Yeah. That
times twenty, because when texting/IMing, you're trying to take the medium
into account. Phone conversations are so trivial to the hearing, we ramble at
a million miles per hour and often don't include references to our demeanor in
words or tone.

It even matters what state the relay operator is working for at the time, as
the laws of how the call must be handled are state laws. In Utah you must read
exactly what's typed by a deaf person, even if they speak ASL, and must
directly transcribe what a hearing person says, even if the deaf person
doesn't speak English well. In California, where many people primarily speak
ASL, you can translate from English to ASL, and ASL to English. Of course, for
us hearing people it's less translation, more interpretation.

One of the biggest problems I have at work? Phone lines suck. It's hard for us
to hear (not to understand the deaf accent of, but literally audibly hear) so
many callers, both deaf and hearing. And it's rough transcribing a voice with
normal call quality and even moreso if the other connection is bad. I never
realized just how bad phones sucked until I worked there. I can go home and
use Google Talk on my laptop and it sounds crystal clear in comparison to any
phone.

Relay calls work well for saying hi to your mother and (usually) calling up
your cell phone provider. You will not be explaining fizz buzz to a potential
employer. I love my coworkers, but the first time you say "So you'd use a
switch-case statement," they'd write "So you use which case statement q" ("Q"
indicates a question,) and keep typing, because asking people to repeat
themselves infuriates them, and makes them lose their concentration. And
because of honest mis-hearing. You don't know the topic, so you don't know you
heard it wrong, so you go on.

Finally, why don't modern cell phones handle TTY calls? Turn the phone
landscape, put a scrolling conversation banner at the top and the keyboard at
the bottom. You'd think it'd be cake. Anyone know what the problem is there?
If nothing, then someone get on that, make an app. Make yourself some money.
Just credit me as an inspiration. ;)

~~~
jallmann
> Finally, why don't modern cell phones handle TTY calls?

My phone (a Droid 3) has a TTY mode. Not sure what that entails though.

~~~
wesbrown18
This means that they change the audio encoding to not exclude the tones of
BAUDOT. You can then hook a TTY up via the headset cable.

------
dm8
Great article. OP - If it helps, I also have a minor physical disability. I
can't type properly with one hand (congenital defect, although its impacting
aesthetics more when compared to motor functions) yet I'm working as an
engineer for few years. And now I'm part of founding team at a startup. It
never acted as an impediment in my life or career. I generally don't mention
about it (to anyone) because I feel I get unwanted sympathies and awkward
looks. As I'm perfectly normal like otherwise.

Don't worry about hearing disability. It will only affect you if only you
think so. And there will be some times you'll feel lonely and depressed (like
after your bowling alley incident) because you are not part of the norm.
Always remember, despite all the odds you are doing amazing (compared to
others). So use that as an inspiration. That said, I would like to wish your
well in you career.

P.S. This is the first time I'm talking about it in public forum (in my entire
life). So I'm inspired from your post :-)

------
zaroth
This is a really hard post to try to comment on, but here's just a thought.
The first thing I felt reading the story was impressed. It's a good article on
HNfp. But are you asking too much out of "work"?

It is great to hone a skill, apply it, create great things with it, and
ultimately survive and thrive off of that skill. I think that's incredible.
The internet has certainly help open more opportunities for those with
disabilities.

You're fighting an inspiring fight against your disability. Give your co-
founder and your co-workers some major credit too. It's not every
startup/founder who would make the hire.

~~~
sarenji
Thanks, this means a lot. What you say is true. I've had a hard time
separating work from personal life, since this is my first job (ever!). Going
forward, I have a better idea of what to expect.

I also wanted to make it clear that I'm _extremely_ thankful to my work for
taking the chance to hire me. I love literally everyone here, even though,
sometimes, I feel alone. Now, I'd consider all of them my friends. That's the
basic sense I tried to get across with this post.

------
rdl
"The only good access service I’ve ever gotten is Cued Speech. In a basic
sense, Cued Speech is a system that uses signs for sound. It was invented to
battle the spectacularly low deaf literacy rate. (The average reading level of
deaf 17- and 18-year-olds is at the fourth grade level.2) "

Wow. That is seriously depressing. I can't even imagine being deaf and not
reading a lot. (I actually don't think my life would be seriously negatively
impacted by being deaf; it would be an excuse to take meetings on IRC and via
email, which would improve productivity for everyone; I already largely prefer
subtitled video content. The only thing I'd really miss is listening to
audiobooks while driving.)

(I've known several deaf and a few blind people who are amazing software
engineers; over the Internet, it's pretty hard to tell.)

~~~
brainless
You are trying to imagine something that normal humans can not easily. That is
why you are probably very wrong. Do not assume your life would have been very
similar if you were deaf. Remember each and every day of you life would pose
more struggle, much more than you go through now.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
There's the flip side too. The OP mentions that they largely reject Deaf
culture instead identifying as deaf.

Some Deaf people enjoy their lifestyle and the community and culture that
surrounds them so much that they would choose for their children to be deaf so
that they too can be a fully accepted (!) part of that same culture. TBH I've
a lot of sympathy with that position.

In short, be cautious. A sign user living amongst a deaf community might well
feel offended at your pity and assumption that theirs is a lower quality of
life (for some measure of quality).

I think the OPs chosen field must be particularly hard - speakers have
difficulty with communicating code/markup too, it requires a mix of
communication media to effectively and unambiguously communicate code IMO.
Transliterating code in to English can be tricky, I bet it's hard in sign too.

I'm interested whether the OP uses ASL at all (or some other sign language) or
only uses Cued Speech. Also whether they've attempted to educate their
colleagues in Cued Speech and if that has helped at all?

------
mudgemeister
At risk of committing the eternal developer fallacy of attempting to fix
cultural problems with technology: is there anything we, as a hacker
community, can do to help?

As brother to a profoundly deaf sister (whose nerve-deafness and age make her
ineligible for the cochlea implant), the most obvious opportunity is the poor
accessibility of online video as you mentioned under "Screencasts, talks, and
video tutorials". It seems that YouTube is making great progress in this area
(c.f. <http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about> and the simplicity of the
transcript format at
[http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=166810));
is it just a case of contributing more transcripts and bringing this
functionality to all video?

I vaguely remember some other efforts in this area, it'd be great if there was
some painless way to transcribe arbitrary video (such as screencasts) and be
able to wrap a player with caption support.

------
abecedarius
_For most company interview applications, they ask for a phone number without
alternatives. ... I never hear back from these._

I've seen the same kind of thing. When I started looking for work in the bay
area in 1996, when my email got a response, it was always with "give us a
call" or "what's your phone number?" (when I'd already noted I couldn't do
phones -- this was before internet phone relay). I'd write back politely
reexplaining the issue and offer alternatives, and always, _always_ , that was
the last I'd hear from them.

To the recruiter or whoever, the deaf candidate is a bit more trouble,
weirdness, uncertainty, which apparently was just enough to consistently push
me into the wastebasket; to the candidate, any one such episode can be
shrugged off, but when it happens repeatedly, for months... that's something
else. Try to remember this when you find yourself on the other side of this
dynamic.

(I finally got an interview with Peter Norvig's startup because he personally
remembered me from a bug I'd found in his book. Similar story for other job
offers -- contacts matter.)

------
pwim
Have you considered doing your own start up? From reading your story, I saw
several opportunities. In particular

 _I don’t know if it’s whether they never saw my note, whether they rejected
my resume silently, or whether they attempted calling my phone number (which
doesn’t take calls)._

stood out to me. It wasn't clear to me what happens when someone called the
phone, but seemed like it rejected calls. Why not have an answering machine
like service, where people can leave a message and it gets transcribed?

~~~
AngryParsley
That sounds like it would work pretty well. Set up voicemail, but have it
mention that the person is deaf and that an SMS or e-mail would be more
convenient. The tricky part is transcription. If you want better transcription
than Google Voice, you have to use a human.[1] That means Mechanical Turk or a
TTY operator.

My main concern is how viable such a product would be. Depending on who you
ask, 0.2-0.4% of the population is considered deaf. That's not a very big
potential market.

1\. I find it amusing that Google Voice transcribes robot voices particularly
poorly. I've had voicemails from PagerDuty transcribed as "This is the FBI"
when the actual message started with, "This is PagerDuty".

~~~
daeken
> Depending on who you ask, 0.2-0.4% of the population is considered deaf.
> That's not a very big potential market.

It's definitely not a very big potential market, but it's a substantial sector
of the population that's very, very underserved. I think that there's a lot of
potential to make a decent chunk of money while doing a lot of good. I've been
thinking a lot for the past year or two about technology for the blind (both
in terms of assistance devices and games) and I've come to the same conclusion
there, largely.

------
captdeaf
Hi. I'm 32, I'm deaf, and an engineer. Formerly of RIT (though I left long
before graduation). Currently located in the Bay Area of CA.

My first job was with Amazon. I was their first deaf corporate employee, and
had to fight for every interpreter hour I got. Quit after a year. Did remote
contracting for a year and a half, then went to Google. Quit after 2.5 years,
and now I work in an office with deaf friends, we do consulting+etc (and are
hoping to eventually bootstrap our own startup out of our office =).

Bottom line: Even Google may have utterly fantastic engineers. But even though
they gave me a daily interpreter (11-3pm every day, and on demand outside of
that, no problem), it's still isolating.

For the other commenters: No deaf person will ever hear anything that isn't
told directly to them. Nobody realizes that. In a group discussion, nobody's
speaking directly to the deaf person. An interpreter helps, but only somewhat.

One analogy I always liked to tell hearing people: Imagine if you lived in a
world of telepaths, where everybody could communicate with each other except
for you.

As for the post:

Solitude: Yes, this won't change. Yes, it sucks. I got a cochlear implant last
year (yes, at age 31). Though since I wore hearing aids for the majority of my
life, I still had enough hearing-related processor neurons in my brain left.
It's been fantastic.

Group conversations: This is why I work in a deaf office. Sure - the pay is
considerably lower than Google, there's no free food and the work may be
considered duller, but it's as relieving as going home after wearing a
blindfold all year long and being able to remove it and use your eyes again.

Managers and teammates may sympathize and wish they could learn, but the stark
fact is they really don't have the time. It's a very high pressure
environment, and everyone needs to constantly be at their best. This, again,
is considerably harder for us.

Love: Sure, it's hard, but it's nowhere near impossible, as I can attest (Been
with my current, hearing, girlfriend for 4 years).

To go off on another note you stuck in here: I agree - deafness is just
another adjective. Not an identifier.

Interviews - Yes, it sucks that they don't know jack, but you really need to
take the lead in your interviews.

Don't let them try and figure it out - That wastes their time (not a good
thing) and likely leads to a solution that is no good (live meeting). Instead,
they'll express their interest in interviewing you - "What time can we call
you?". Write back with your requirements, e.g: "I would prefer to converse via
(skype, gchat, what have you)."

My Amazon screen interview, amusingly enough, was in a Text MUD (The
interviewer noted my background in it and had an interest). My Google
interview simply via gmail chat. My other screen interviews have been via AIM
or GChat, because I demand them. In-person interviews? Require an interpreter.
If it's in an area familiar to you, suggest an agency and/or a specific
interpreter.

Screencasts, talks, video tutorials: Add to this list webisodes like "The
Guild" and "SMBC Theater". Video-on-demand like netflix and hulu (both slowly
improving), amazon instant video, showtime and hbo, etc.

Sadly, nothing ever happens without ridiculous amounts of (pick one) 1) Legal
action. 2) Personal work. 3) convincing. Among my personal items of pride is
that I am one of the engineers who first convinced them and then developed
Captions for YouTube. (Alas, they didn't go for the "community captioning"
idea.)

Access services: I'm a signer, not cued speech, alas, but this is why I never
went to class =). _cough_. You can find interpreters and transcribers all
across the board on the technical spectrum. I went through a number of
interpreters before I picked my regular interpreter, and trained her on the
vocabulary. (Poor interpreter had to read through a 200 page print-out of
internal Google vocabulary!)

(Of course, this post did remind me of one very early phone interview with a
tech shop while using text relay. "Do you have any experience with eunuchs?"
(unix))

Deaf Culture: I am with you there.

Friends: Welcome to humanity. We're very social creatures no matter how we try
to fool ourselves at first. I was content to be isolated in my dorm room early
in college (and before that). But later in college, and ever since, a growing
discontent with being isolated from in-person interactions.

~~~
Kluny
Hey, I'm also deaf and studying programming. I had an internship at a web
design company, which ended badly, mostly due to my misreading of social cues.
Do you have any advice on how to avoid that in the future? And is there some
kind of meet up forum where I can meet other deaf programmers? Most of the
deaf people I meet in everyday life are semi-literate, and, though perfectly
nice people, not very interesting to talk to. It'd be nice to find more people
like me.

~~~
becho
I commented above; posting here so you see it too --

We would like to host a meetup (in the Bay area) and have a drink and get to
know each other. If you'd (and anyone else, all are welcome) be interested in
that, email me at bobby at brilliantecho.com and I'll put something together.

~~~
Kluny
Hmm, I live a bit far from the Bay area to make the meeting. I really want to
have some sort of community, now that I know there's a couple of us. How about
a facebook page? Would all of you contact me, shannon at rocketships.ca, so I
can invite you?

------
welp
Wow, this article has hit be pretty hard as well -- I have been profoundly
deaf since I was about three and a half. The fact that my deafness hit quite
late means that I'm pretty proficient at oral English (thanks Mom and Dad!),
it does mean that I miss out on a lot at work or in my social groups.

I have had to put so much effort into getting out there and meeting new
people, but now that I have, I wouldn't give up any of my friends for the
world as they are pretty amazing and make sure that I'm included in
everything. As in anotherdeaf's story[0], if I'm at a pub or MacDonald's or
something, and they know I've not heard something they will quickly step in to
sort it out. None of them get embarrassed or anything when I asked them to
repeat what someone else said, and all of them are happy to say the same thing
over and over until I've got it -- I guess what I'm trying to say is that when
you've found your friends and trained them up, they'll stick right by you.
People always ask me how I got to be so confident, but the truth is I'm really
not, I'm always terrified of meeting new people but I put myself out there and
make a huge effort to talk to them, ask questions and just get on with them in
general. It is horrible and I'm always exhausted afterward, but the rewards
make it worth it. Just stick at it, talk to people, and you'll be good to go.

Have you taken lipreading classes ever? If not, you should definitely consider
it. It means that I can happily talk to people in swimming pools, e.t.c., when
I can't wear my hearing aid.

Insofar as work is concerned, I've never had any issues with special
arrangements for interviews -- I tend to email recruiters directly, but IBM,
Google and Twitter (as well as other smaller companies) have been more than
happy to make special arrangements for me. Always, always ask, the only tip I
would give you is to put an obviously fake telephone number in (e.g.,
000000000).

Oh, and don't worry about the girls. If they're worth it then they will come
to you :) And definitely have kids. Even if they ARE deaf, they will still get
a lot out of life, and things have been improving so much since I was at
primary school all those years ago.

Also if (any of) you want to just shoot shit or have someone to chat to about
deaf stuff, my email address is in my bio, so feel free to send me an email or
add me on gtalk.

[0] <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4002231>

EDIT: (Also I have just sent out that article and links to some of the
comments in here to my best friends, partly as a way to say thanks to them for
all the trouble they've put in for me over the years, and also to help them
understand where I'm coming from some of the time.)

~~~
saizai
Why don't you just give out a relay number? Even I have one - people call,
they get a relay op who pings my IM. Works well.

------
kevinchen
Throughout this entire post, I kept coming back to one thought: when we build
things, accessibility isn't just about adding ramps for wheelchairs.

------
ralfd
Very interesting and informative!

The eternal drunken night question "Deaf or blind?" I would still answer I
would rather be the first than the latter.

Edit:

Just remembered this hilarious comic which I read years ago. "Dorm of the
Deaf":

<http://www.dustinland.com/archives/archives319.html>

~~~
gwern
Ah, that brings back memories of NTID. Especially the deaf sex bit.

------
miyudreams
When you work in or travel to another country speaking another language that
you don't know, it feels like you are really left out. Doing anything requires
more effort. You feel lost and confused. Not understanding when your coworkers
speak their language eventually becomes frustrating. Of course in this case,
you're out for an adventure and new learning experiences, so it's not the same
as actually be physically deaf.

~~~
mrspeaker
I'm not deaf (actually, one of my ears doesn't work, but hey...) but I
understand completely what this guy says about feeling like he's missing out
on everything - I moved to a France to work, and my French is... poor.

Everyone speaks English, but only to me. Figuring out what's going on at a
high level is really difficult (me: "Where is everyone going?" them: "To the
new office." me: "WTF? We have a new office?!") but worse is missing out on
all the in-jokes and messin' around. I'm not saying it's the same thing as
being deaf, but it turns out that stuff is pretty important.

~~~
phatbyte
You should consider doing a french language intensive course, also, try to get
out of the house as much as possible and talk to people and friends.

The best way to learn a new language for me it's to talk to the natives daily,
even if you don't understand anything first :P. Good luck

------
davedx
Just want to say I strongly identified with the lunchtime loneliness thing. I
recently moved to the Netherlands and fortunately, I am in the position to
change the fact that I can't understand what people are saying (by learning
the language) - but still, I've had quite a lot of incredibly lonely
lunchtimes until I could pick up what people were talking about.

It really was the time of day that I started to just get down about before it
even began, and would spend time at my desk rather than try to participate in
lunchtime. I'm a naturally sociable person so it was a bit "step back" for me
to not be able to understand the conversation, and I especially hated not
being able to understand the jokes.

I still have this, but of course I have the option to learn the language,
which I am doing. I don't have any suggestions on how to improve this
experience for you, just want to let you know that you are far from alone in
experiencing this, and there are many people out there that understand how
isolating it can be in the workplace.

------
nelmaven
Someone should tell Google to add speech balloons in their glasses to the
people that you're talking too, like in videogames.

That would be revolutionary.

~~~
phatbyte
Although this would be awesome, I don't know how we could isolate sound source
and make it perceptible to the audio transcriber, on a street with lots of
people walking around and talking this would be complicated.

Nevertheless this would be a great idea.

~~~
gwern
Use a directional mike aimed at roughly one's center of vision?

~~~
vitno
I feel like that cuts out some of the uses... perhaps you could us ML
techniques to separate out different voices and then individually transcribe
them?

edit: wow this is a complicated problem now that I am thinking about it... the
amount of processing the brain does...

~~~
jameshart
I may be wrong, but I believe Kinect uses the information from its vision
system that identifies people, to help inform the microphone array system with
data that it can use to identify which of the people in front of it is talking
at any one time...

------
anotherdeaf
TL;DR It sucks to be so isolated (and that’s probably why this post is so long
in the first place)

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I didn't realize until now how much it
meant to me to hear about others going through similar experiences.

I’m 22 and I just realized now that I haven't really communicated with another
deaf person for about a decade since I graduated from elementary school where
there was a small, tight-knit class for handicapped students. The lack of
communication might ironically be a byproduct of doing too well in school. It
started when I first transferred out of my handicapped class into the
“regular” class in elementary school. Then I transferred to an academically
prestigious school district while everyone else went to the middle school with
the better disability program. And at the moment I’m a student at UC Berkeley,
where I learned that there are probably only about 30-something deaf students
out of a population of ~36,000 (and, surprise surprise, I never managed to
come across them). I guess the point is, after that long of a time, I can't
help but start believing that I’m the only deaf person everywhere (which, on
second thought, is probably true most of the time).

So as I read through your post, I couldn’t help but feel a stabbing pain of
recognition that, “hey, I totally had that same feeling before too...”
Especially the group conversations, where I often smiled and laughed with
everyone pretending that I heard the joke. Oh and there’s the frustrating lack
of subtitles in video tutorials and screencasts too. Then again, it’s not new
to me to learn based on reading alone, since it’s been the same with almost
everything else: elementary school, middle school, high school, university.
But still, it sure would have been nice to follow along with the speaker in
the videos.

Admittedly, my hearing circumstances are rather different from yours since I
grew up as a hard-of-hearing kid who could still hear and communicate orally
as long as my hearing aids are in. However, two summers ago, I jarringly lost
all usable hearing in my left ear without an explanation. And sadly, it just
had to be the better ear that I used for everything hearing-related like phone
calls and listening to music on earbuds...sort of like losing your right hand
when you’re right-handed, so now you have to learn how to use your left hand.
Afterward, I learned that I had a genetic condition where my hearing was fated
since birth to progressively worsen and peak as I reach my 20s.

Since then, I really struggled with hearing in a new, scary way that I never
experienced when I could at least hear with hearing aids in both ears. No
matter how hard I tried to concentrate on the lipreading and body language, I
could barely comprehend others and would miss just as often as I scored. Now I
can’t help but laugh at how my younger self really overestimated her pro
lipreading and bodyreading skills. Since I was groomed to live and succeed in
the hearing culture, it doesn’t help that I can’t do sign language either.
However, I just learned about the Cued Speech system for the first time from
your post, so I’m rather excited about learning up on this system with my
sister later today.

But for now, what ended up happening after losing my left ear’s hearing is
that, for about an entire year, I didn’t talk. Back then, it was normal for me
to go through an entire day speaking less than 5 words (“Hello roommate!”,
“Bye roommate!”). My younger sister eventually managed to keep me human by
calling me on the phone everyday to chat for hours. (Since I know the sound of
her voice like the back of my hand, I can understand her 90% of the
time...beats my 50% average by a long shot.) And when we eventually moved in
together, she’s my handy second ear out in the wild. We’ve worked out a system
where she watches my face closely when I’m interacting with the clerk or
waitress so she can smoothly step in at the slightest quizzical or panicky
expression and say stuff like “Yes, we’ll both have that drink, thank you.”

For now, I’m saving up for a cochlear implant, so I’m optimistic that I’ll
manage in the end, especially with the help of my sister along the way. So to
Alice when you wake up and read this in the morning (I’m writing this at
3:45AM), thank you. :]

I’m so sorry for this wall of texts, I originally had nothing to say and now I
ended up with too much to say. I think reading your post really opened up a
dam of all these memories, thoughts and feelings. Once again, thank you for
sharing, and I hope you do well on your next venture!

~~~
hersisteralice
TL;DR I actually made an account to reply to this

Hi, sister here. It's 8 AM and she's (^) currently sleeping soundly near me,
but I'd thought I'd contribute my own 2 cents on the whole matter.

I'm Alice, and I've grown up with a partially deaf sister whose hearing has
gotten progressively worse in the recent years. I've watched her listen to me
with ease years ago to leaning over and struggling to what I have to say now
today. I'm currently studying music and aspiring to be a composer, and what
does scare me is the thought that my sister won't be able to listen to my
music when the time comes. She's the one who's supported my endeavor the most.

And now that I think about it, I never really "feel" that she has this hard of
hearing situation. It's never been that way to me, I just accepted her since I
was young and we've both been raised normally together like everyone else
except for those awfully boring visits to The Hearing Doctors in which I
frittered waiting around whining what's for lunch.

My sister has been fortunate enough to have the opportunities to grow into the
person she is now. Of course, that doesn't undermine her struggles at all, but
I understand that everyone has a different experience even within a group of
relatable topics. I'm glad that my sister's never been socially isolated or
bullied, like another close friend that I have.

I'll call him C here. He's an online friend (real as any other friend) and I
cherish him a lot. He's 21, partially deaf, and has had cochlear implants. His
life experiences differ a lot from my sister's. He's faced much adversities.
C's been bullied when he was younger, has gone through depression, been
socially isolated (at one point homeless) but is making considerable progress
today in his game design education and I believe he'll succeed on his own
someday. There was a time I didn't understand why he was so self conscious
about his voice. The first time I heard him, I realized his speech was slurred
- especially with the 's' and 'l' if I remember correctly. Once I got past a
certain threshold, it was fairly easy to understand him and I didn't pay too
much attention to some pronounciation difficulties.

Although we've been slowly drifting apart and now we're busy immersed in our
lives, I won't forget the stories that he's told me or the things he's taught
me. OP, thank you for posting your story. You sound like someone's who been
through a lot.

And also -- don't give up on romance. I forgot to mention that there was a
point in time that I liked C (romantically!), and he knew that very well. What
can I say? I was attracted to his wisdom and motivation to keep on going, no
matter how tough things got. :)

------
mmagin
Tangentially, I was recently noticing how few people who are physically
disabled I've seen in the software industry, much less people with
disabilities affecting communication. Whether it's discrimination or other
factors, it seems like there are likely a lot of potential workers which our
society is not making good use of.

------
netvarun
Thanks for sharing your story! It takes true guts to write about your true
feelings.

off-topic: You have one of the coolest facebook usernames. Completely stumped
me for a while!

~~~
pooriaazimi
> _off-topic: You have one of the coolest facebook usernames. Completely
> stumped me for a while!_

Even though you warned me, I was still taken aback:
<http://facebook.com/about.xhtm>

------
ars
> The average reading level of deaf 17- and 18-year-olds is at the fourth
> grade level.

Why??? I would have expected exactly the opposite. Words can open entire
worlds. And today as never before a deaf person can communicate with people.
The internet is text based as never before in human history.

It can't be because written speech is based on oral. It's certainly possible
to learn to read phonetically, but you don't have to. That's what sight words
are. I read everything entirely by sight and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

So why?

I would expect someone deaf to read at a blistering pace, and to type equally
fast. To the point that they could communicate entirely by typing at almost
the same speed as speech.

What assumption am I making that is incorrect, since apparently that's not
what actually happens.

~~~
jacobr
You won't get exposed to language nearly as much as a hearing person. Also,
sign languages don't use regular English words, so your vocabulary will not be
expanded that much in conversations.

~~~
jeffool
I won't pretend to know about literacy rates among deaf people, but I want to
underline jacobr's point here: ASL is not "English with hands" any more than
spoken Japanese is "English with different sounds". It's a different language,
with different grammar, and different rules. Don't let the "American" throw
you off.

They may use familiar words and letters when writing, but you can say the same
about many European languages, and as an English speaker figure out some
sentences in Spanish or French. Now, you may figure out MORE in written ASL,
but it's still different.

Though, if I recall, ASL was based off of a French sign language. That's why
adjectives go after the nouns in ASL.

~~~
neilk
Sign languages are proper languages of their own, and even if they are
invented by hearing people, when a deaf community adopts the language it
usually diverges quickly from the hearing culture language.

So, you're right that there was a precedent to ASL that came from France but
don't assume that ASL is much like French.

~~~
rmc
English came from French (& German).

 _(For relaxed definitions of 'French' and 'German')_

~~~
pacaro
Yeah, the history of English is waaay more complex than that. But one thing is
pretty clear, it isn't a Romance language, and isn't derived from French; it
does have a huge French influence, but almost entirely in the form of loan
words.

~~~
rmc
What's interesting is how the upper class words are the french words. This is
due to the Norman invasion. So the germanic word "cow" which the farmer deals
with gets turned into "beef" for the lord. The lowly germanic "chicken"
becomes a french "poultry". A simple germanic "house" is not as grand as a
french "mansion" or "manor".

------
masukomi
I appreciate taking the time and effort to put this article out there, and
hope that it will help us hearing folk to improve our dealings with deaf
people, but I can't help but have the following thoughts:

1) can the poster not lip-read? I realize it's not 100% accurate and you only
get the portion of the conversation from the person you're looking at at the
moment but from the description it sounds as if the poster isn't getting ANY
of the conversations.

2) Didn't take the offered speech therapy funding?!?! WTF. I wouldn't even
remotely suggest that every Deaf person needs to learn to speak BUT if you are
feeling so left out of conversations with hearing people, and it's effecting
you so significantly emotionally not taking advantage of this just sounds
crazy.

I recognize that us hearing folk can never fully understand what it's like to
be deaf, but at the same time this post really makes it sound like the poster
hasn't been taking any steps to counter the situation that's causing them
emotional distress. Getting your employer to pay for someone to come in and
translate for you is NOT the solution. Sure it may help, but unless they're
going to follow you around all day it only addresses a teeny portion of the
problem.

Also, regarding the avoidance of the deaf community: I can understand not
identifying with Deaf culture, but getting together with other deaf people
doesn't have to be about that. I live in Cambridge, MA (very white and very
english speaking). On my street there's a portugese club where people get
together simple to communicate in a familiar language. Down the road there's a
portugese sports club where they get together to watch soccer. A couple miles
away there's a Korean church. These people are primarily getting together
because of language. This sounds like exactly the same problem to me. The
poster has trouble dealing with oral language, feels isolated as a result, and
then actively avoids getting together with people who do speek their language,
thus increasing the sense of isolation.

Yes, there's much we hearing folk could do to help improve the poster's
situation, but it seems as if the poster isn't doing much to improve their
situation either.

~~~
sarenji
1) Lip-reading is hard. In a group conversation, how many of the people
speaking are actually looking at you? How do you follow a back-and-forth? What
if someone interrupts? Who is it? People vary in lip-reading skill. I'm on the
lower end. If someone says "Lipreading sucks," and you get 50% of it, you get
either "Lipread" or "ing sucks," neither of which tell you anything. In longer
sentences, you can sometimes guess, but I seem to be terrible at it?

2) My speech has never been a problem as my work understands me quite well. I
perceived I had bigger things to deal with, like working on understanding what
people say and getting up-to-date on stuff happening at work.

3) I have many Deaf friends back in college who I try to hang out with. I'm
still learning sign language from them, and they've all been very helpful and
supportive. Until I become proficient enough to actually participate in signed
conversations, though, I still don't feel as if I belong.

By the way, me being more proactive is something I'm also working hard on :-)
It's all a process.

------
Joakal
I had similar issues with you, sarenji:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2111278> (Ask HN: Deaf wannabe
entrepreneur faces networking issues. How to work with it? | Hacker News)

As for love, all the people I've dated were 'normal' as in, they didn't have
hearing problems like I did. They didn't mind. In fact, I even met people on
OkCupid despite them knowing I'm deaf. Of course, it's hard if you're a
developer and they're a designer, there's no common ground unless you both
want it. My advice? Keep trying so you still have as much opportunities as
others.

~~~
Kluny
Reposting earlier comment to make sure you see it:

Heya, I'd like to start some sort of community for those of us who are deaf
and work in technology. I'm studying programming in Victoria, myself. Want to
contact me, shannon at rocketships.ca, and I'll invite you to a facebook page?
If you have a better idea than facebook, let me know, too.

~~~
Joakal
I don't use Facebook that much. Tried MSN? I believe I know of at least one
deaf person on msn (From when I posted the earlier thread).

Alternatively, IRC? There's #startup, why not #deafstartup channel?

------
lsiebert
ASL was my foreign language in college. I wish I remembered it better,
frankly. It's definitely got to be difficult to translate technological jargon
and neologisms into ASL, much less math, where your instruction is likely
highly symbolic. Probably the best you would get would be to get a lot of
fingerspelling if the person doesn't understand the subject... I can
definitely see how Cued Speech would work better for you. Frankly real time
translation into ASL has some big difficulties because of major grammatical
differences, not to mention that a fast gesture can differ in meaning from a
slower one. And that's assuming they were actually using ASL for the
translation, instead of some sort of pidgin.

Anyway I think one of the important differences between most IM/chat and and
speech is that speech is spontaneous and instant because it's serial and
unbuffered. I think the closest you get in chat is Google wave, where you
didn't hit enter, you typed and each letter showed up on the screen. I do
wonder if even bad speech recognition, if it was real time, might not help
with conversations. I really wish other IM services used real time typing,
instead of requiring people to hit enter or send.

Also don't assume your alone. There are probably quite a few deaf hackers, and
collaboration might help bring resources like subtitled or transcribed videos
to light.

Anyway, I appreciate the insight. Keep kicking ass.

------
caffeineninja
David, that was a very eloquent and well-written post and I certainly hope
that you came away from writing that with a better sense of well-being.

I, too, am deaf, but our experiences are different. I was born deaf and am
profoundly deaf with 85+ db loss in both ears. At the risk of sounding
conceited, I'm what you would consider a success story.

A background:

As a child, I lived in San Diego, and my parents (at the advice of my speech
therapist) enrolled me in a deaf school in Los Angeles that specialized in
mainstreaming deaf students. I went there for 3 years and then joined a normal
school in San Diego in 2nd grade wearing hearing aids.

At some point in time, I developed an ability to lip read and was able to
speak without difficulty. This enabled me to have normal conversations with my
hearing peers, and I was able to socialize.

So, trying to keep this short, I went through high school, went to college,
received a cochlear implant (about 6 years ago), graduated from college with a
degree in design, and I've actually worked with a number of companies in
teams. I also met my wife (who is hearing) in college, and we've been together
10 years and married for almost 4.

I'm currently in my third week working as a lead designer for a YC startup in
San Francisco, and it's a 6-member team. Great people, and there have been no
issues as far as communication, and the team members here are very willing to
accommodate any challenges I may have.

With that said, because lip reading requires me to intently watch people, I
share your frustrations when it comes to conversations in an open office
environment and in group conversations, but I found that one of the best ways
to try to control that is to engage in conversation rather than be the 'fly on
the wall'. I greatly rely on context when I lip read, so it's important to
know what the context of the discussion is. It's actually much harder to lip
read someone when you don't know what the context is.

Now, I have to say something - you said you use Cued Speech, and you sign. I
believe that if you continued to do so, it would only frustrate you further.
Furthermore, I'm surprised that you didn't make use of your speech therapy
benefit, as that's probably the best way for you to overcome the difficulties
you have. Learn how to lip read too - it's a fun party trick. :) Also, try to
engage in normal conversations with your co-workers, no matter how challenging
it might be. Practice is important. They will respect you for it. I completely
understand the challenges of having a handicap and the challenges behind
getting accommodation for your handicap, but I find that the best strategy is
to ignore your handicap, overcome it, and come up with ways to accommodate
_yourself_ , not others.

If OP is David, you can contact me here on HN.

~~~
veb
I'm deaf too, however I don't have a cochlear implant and like you I learned
how to read lips and body-language when I was a child. I agree with you too,
much easier to control (hehe) or engage in the conversation rather than be the
fly on the wall.

What really gets me though, is when you see those micro expressions flash over
peoples faces and then you start to doubt what you perhaps misheard or what
you should've said. This is the most annoying of all problems I've ever had to
deal with, as I am constantly second guessing myself, which isn't pretty.

Another thing to all deaf people out there who rely on lip-reading -- how do
you go for concentration and memory when it comes to having a decent
conversation? If I concentrate _really_ hard, I'll find that I can understand
what's going on, and converse back. However, if I do too much of it, my brain
starts to wander because it simply starts getting too tired to concentrate at
such a high level for long which ends up making me feel stupid and I either
only remember the start of what they said, or the end.

For hearing people, it goes like this:

>Person says something

>You then have to playback what you've just heard, seen what words they could
have said with their lips, the context and the way their body language is.

>Your brain then does some computations and tries to figure out what's being
said

>Your brain then tells you to say XYZ

This goes for _every_ word they say. So if you're not concentrating at 120%
you'll miss some words. Context is important, because I LOVE YOU can also look
like COLORFUL if you're trying to lip read someone -- but you won't fool any
professional lip reader like us ;-)

~~~
driverdan
Is there anything us hearing folk can do to make it easier?

When I've had conversations with people who lip read I've made sure to keep my
speech at a reasonable pace, avoiding talking too quickly, and I tend to
sharpen up my pronunciation and annunciation to avoid slurring words or
letters.

~~~
DanBC
Don't have a beard or a face covering. (This can be tricky with some cultures
requiring a face to be covered.)

Don't have a bright window behind you (which will silhouette your head and
make it harder to see your mouth.)

------
cmvf51
Thank you for sharing that post and having the courage to express your
feelings. I could never understand what it must be like to be deaf. But being
gay, and a mid-20's software developer, I felt many of the same feelings you
described reading your post.

It took me many years after college to finally work for a company where there
was another developer who was gay and also happened to be my age. We never
worked together on projects, but did talk after-work sometimes, just knowing
that I wasn't some sort of anomaly was reassuring in many ways.

Like Deaf pride, I don't identify with Gay pride either. Being a shy person to
begin with, I have no desire to call more attention to myself. My friends and
family know, but I never worked out how to ever share that with co-workers.
Unfortunately as a result people assume I'm straight. In a male-dominated work
environment, that can be extremely isolating, even hurtful when the inevitable
gay-bashing lunch conversation comes up, those are moments where I would
gladly borrow your deafness.

Over the years, it becomes a lot easier as I learned to reconcile my feelings,
and I figure it'll get easier when I meet someone special enough to frame in a
picture, and put on my desk at work. Just like you will.

------
matrix
Kind of late to the game, but David - or anyone else for that matter - I'm
deaf too, and happy to talk with you about it.

In a nutshell: don't let deafness define you. It's hard, dispiriting work at
times, but believe me, there's opportunity out there in all aspects of life if
you approach things with the right can-do spirit (yes, this includes finding a
partner - I'm exceptionally fortunate in that regard myself :-D ).

------
gregd
I read your post with extreme interest and came to a better understanding
about being deaf. Thank you for that.

I have a few questions. Can you sign? Can you read lips? Can you pronounce
words? The reason I ask is I once had a deaf friend. He didn't sign, or at
least didn't try to with people that didn't know ASL, but he could read lips.
He could read lips so well that he could tell if you were just mouthing a word
or actually saying it out loud. He would often admonish us if we simply
mouthed a word to him. :) It got to the point where the only impediment to
ongoing conversations with him, was that he had to be looking at you. He was
so good at reading lips that he would often pickup parts of conversations he
wasn't a part of ( like "overhearing" one ). If he wanted to know what was
going on, he simply had to look in people's direction and read their lips.

It was awkward for the first day or two. Him looking right at you, you getting
over mouthing words to him, him replying to you in the tone that only a person
who can't hear their own words would. To me, it was no different than learning
to speak with a foreigner but the added benefit was that we seemed to pick it
up after no more than a week of solid talking, laughing, mocking, and
understanding. I seem to recall him telling me to shutup on more than one
occasion. Coming out of his mouth, it sounded more like "shauuuuup" with no
real emphasis on the T or the P, but I knew what he meant.

I don't profess to know whether or not he's gone through the same loneliness
as you, but it seems that he found a way to be a part of "normal" that worked
for him and for the people around him. Does this mean I wouldn't have learned
sign language? No. This also wasn't a work environment and it predates any
technological "advancements" that may be at your disposal now.

------
tchang2010
Thanks for sharing, David. I have the same experience as you even though I am
not deaf. The things about me is that I am a Hmong refugee from Thailand,
uneducated, and had no background knowledge of American. At the ages of 13, I
came to the United States not knowing a word in English. I started learning
English alphabet and words when I arrived here. After a year of trying to
learn English, I went straight to high school. That's when I realized how hard
it was to live in a world where you don't understand what people are saying,
but the situation force you to live with it. I have been in the same situation
as you, which to live among others who could easily communicated to one
another. I went to high school without friends and without talking to anyone
for 2 years. after 2 years in high school, I was able to understand some
simple conversations use in every day life and able to ask some questions. I
was and still am the quietest guy in class. I am in college now and want to
express myself more but couldn't do it because of the limited English I have.
tchang

------
saizai
I have kinda the inverse issue. I'm hearing, but I have a neurological
disorder that causes occasional unpredictable periods of mutism, during which
ASL is my primary means of communication. Sometimes that also requires
emergency communication because I need immediate help, and especially in those
situations I can't use a pen 'cause of spasticity; it's literally either ASL
or yes/no grunts. :-/

I learned ASL just 'cause it's an awesome language, and I find it sad that
this option is totally ignored by most people. As languages go it's very easy
to learn, most d/Deaf people are happy to help, and it's far less clunky than
cued speech or that godawful SEE.

So I can empathize with the frustration of not being able to communicate — for
me it's on the other end, I can understand everyone around me but can't get
them to understand me.

I kinda wish everyone would just learn some ASL. It's often useful even if
you're talking hearing-to-hearing, signed mode is just plain _different_ from
spoken mode in lots of neat ways, ... but I guess most people aren't language
geeks like me.

------
blairbits
Posts like this pain me. None of the hearing among us will ever truly
understand what this is like. Posts such as this one give us a glimpse in to
what it must be like, but that's all. There's no way we can understand the
difficulties experienced day in and day out for the deaf.

As a stutterer, I like to think that I understand a bit of what's it's like to
not be able to communicate as well as some people. There's times when I have
valuable input, but I won't say it out of fear of wasting people's time. Why
would I spend a few minutes trying to say a few sentences when I can sit and
wait and hope someone else could say the same thing in a few seconds?

It's not nearly the same, but I think it gives me an edge in understanding
this kind of thing. Posts like this really make me more aware of what everyone
can do to help the deaf and other people who struggle with things like this.
Take a few minutes out of your day to help someone.

~~~
olli
I'm also a stutterer. Everyday life is really a challenge when you are
handicapped. And working life is even harder. Living in Germany, there is no
way to do an interview via chat. They want to telephone with you and see you
in person after the phone call. So it's almost impossible to get a job without
help or connections. If you are lucky and got a job, you will always earn less
than your workmates. The reasoning goes like this: 'Why would we want to pay
this guy more money? He won't quit anyway. And if he quits, it's ok. He is
handicapped, he should be happy to work for us." Unfortunately, they are
right. But even buying a cup of coffee at starbucks is hard. Or buying a
hamburger or a beer. You get the idea. And yes, i'm alone and unloved. Is it
self-pity? I really don't know. But "normal" people can't imagine what it's
like being deaf or being a stutterer etc. In the past, i always tried to be
better in some other areas. Be a better programmer, work more, learn lots of
things. But in the end, it's useless. The average normal guy will always get
the job. Or the raise. Or the girl. Or have a nice chat with the starbucks
clerk. My strategy for the future? None, I'm clueless.

------
eka
Thanks David.

You are so correct about access services. I am dyslexic/disgraphic to the
point that I can't write with a pen and paper. I flet like access services was
interseted in helping me pass classes but not excel.

Having issues with reading and writing is nothing like being deaf but many of
us who want to achieve despite/with our disabilities struggle with the
expectation that we accept merely passing.

When I took organic chemistry I was unable to write out chemical formulas and
at the time there was no software to quickly type that information.

My school provided a note taker who was averaging a D in the class when I
needed a B or better to graduate and keep my scholarship. In the end another
student and I had to birbe a classmate for notes, which was a violation of the
honor code.

Being dyslexic is nothing like being deaf

------
grantpalin
Being hard of hearing (severe to profound), I can relate to much of the OP's
post. I use hearing aids, but communication is still challenging. I also rely
on watching who is speaking for lip-reading, facial language, and body
language; putting those together with what I hear creates a "complete" input
for me. For TV, I rely on captioning, and on subtitles for DVDs. I don't
listen to the radio, or much music.

The web is great for communicating and learning because it's very visual, but
podcasts and screencasts, despite possibly being of interest, aren't much good
to me.

I prefer to do most conversing in person; over the phone it's far too easy to
miss something, or confuse one sound or word for another (letters: b, c, d, g,
e; numbers: 15, 50 (pronunciation)). Heavy accents are quite challenging to
handle over the phone. I've had to have another person help me with telephone
calls for official things such as banking, gov't matters, etc.

I'm a university student. In small classes hearing isn't too bad, but larger
classes in lecture halls are much harder to follow. It's easier when the
teacher is doing most of the talking, and harder when it's a more interactive
class, with students contributing.

In a working context, clear communication is important. Even in person it's
easy to miss a key word or phrase, or confuse one for another. Not only that,
but I once interviewed for a web developer position, and was openly
discriminated against when my hearing difficulty was revealed. The interview
didn't go past this point; I could have done the job with my skill set, but
the boss made an issue out of my hearing.

I'm a very visual person: I like to see, to read, to write, and to draw. Being
an avid reader, I enjoy novels and other reading materials, including the web.
I'm mostly self-taught in web development by reading tutorials and books and
reviewing code by other people.

In closing, loss of hearing, whether partial or complete, raises barriers to
work, education, socializing, etc. They can be worked around to some extent,
but they are still they, and as I found out can actively harm you.

------
brainless
I can just say: bravo. The fact that you are not only putting up a fight, but
also sharing this is a sign of novelty.

You are probably going to be a role model to others. Life throws challenges,
those who fight, become heroes.

You have certainly inspired me. Thanks

------
trebor
David, thanks for the glimpse into what it's like to be deaf. I've wondered
what it would be like, but it's pretty hard to imagine the near total
isolation.

I've met several deaf people, but I guess I haven't taken the time to think
about how I would involve a deaf person in a conversation. I think that part
really threw me for a loop. That would be challenging.

I know that if you ever felt left out, or that you missed something, in a
conversation with me, or in a group, then don't hesitate to bump me. I'll be
plenty happy to give anyone who's deaf either what was said or a summary of
the conversation thus far.

------
Deflord
I know this is probably a few days late but just came across this article. Now
this is an interesting perspective, I am deaf as well - and I have a bilateral
cochlear implant. Now I have been working in the IT industry for over 16 years
as a developer, infrastructure support guy and more. I have worked for
companies such as IBM, Shell Oil Company which of course required alot of
interaction. One thing though we the deaf individual have to be proactive and
we can't be reactive. Most of the time the hearing counterparts really do not
know what we can or can't do. Unless we become a bit more assertive. Now but
one thing I am a bit puzzled, you indicate you don't want to be a part of the
deaf community - but what about organizations and individuals who are part of
HLAA? Hearing Loss Association which is really more geared to "oral" deaf
individuals but not necessarily in an ASL format. I am not really
understanding this part. I am very involved in the deaf community, as well
interact with people from HLAA and as well part of the hearing community. But
I have to be proactive to make things happen. And don't look as one or two
people from the deaf community and think they ALL are like that because they
aren't. It would be like everyone reading your article right now and thinking
all of us are like you - but we aren't. I chose NOT to think in a negative
light and think positively. It is a tiring job but it is the only way we can
educate our peers otherwise we get lost in the limelight. And honestly society
nowadays are much more sensitive and understanding about people with
disabilities than in the past. I admire your passion to really get out there -
and admire the fact that you wrote an article on this. But the same time -
think positively life is too short! :) And also - the talk about getting with
a deaf or hard of hearing girl and having deaf/hoh babies is unrealistic. It
has to come from the genes (like mine - my parents are deaf) but if you
because deaf because of sickness or something else and if you hook up with a
deaf/hoh lady who also became deaf because they were sick or non-genetic
reasons your chances of having deaf babies are VERY VERY slim. I have seen so
many CODA (Children of Deaf Adults) who have succeeded well in life - my kids
who are CODA - all three of them are in Honors Program (and they all three are
hearing) and their first language was ASL. Again as I said, think positive you
will go far!

------
jamesrcarr
I've had similar experiences with job interviews as he described. I'm not deaf
but am hard of hearing (severe enough that cocheular implants have been
recommended) and interviewers consistently require over the phone interviews
with no alternatives. Requests to Skype or use gtalk get ignored or shunned
upon (I even had one recruiter state they couldn't do this because then there
would be no way to verify I am the one answering the questions). HR really
needs to get withthe program.

------
fehrbehr
One of my hero's and closest friends is deaf -- my younger brother. This is a
wonderful article. Honest and sincere. Very cool of your founders to let you
post this.

Seeing what life is like from the techie side of the road as a deaf man is a
great reminder to work more collaboratively with our colleagues whether they
are deaf, or any other cool things that make them unique. e.g. English as a
2nd or 3rd language. etc.

Wishing you the best of luck.

------
oncetoomany
I have a family member who is hearing impaired, as well as having worked
closely with someone who is hearing impaired ... I have mixed emotions reading
this article, and am glad you were able to see a path before starting another
new adventure... remember people aren't mind readers, if you don't show them,
they will not understand without having traveled your path before... GL

------
gruseom
I hope you make some good friends at Hacker School.

------
auhaus
Thanks David for sharing your thoughts. It is a really powerful piece. Wish I
know Cued Speech to communicate with you. Why is Cued Speech not more popular.
What can be done to popularize Cued Speech? Seems like it has application not
only only for the hearing impaired, but for the elderly who require the use of
hearing aids to communicate with others.

------
desdichado
Wonderful article, David. I know that it took a lot of inner strength and
courage to write that article. You're the best.

------
bsoist
Thank you so much for sharing something so personal. I've had deaf friends in
my life from time to time over the last 40 years and I thought I understood
(as much as any hearing person can). I was wrong. There is so much more that I
hadn't even considered.

------
anandnilkal
Hi david, though I have not encountered a deaf person in my work life and
chances are very slim. your article has indeed educated me about a thing or
two. it certainly encourages me to be more patient and more communicative.

------
jwingy
This may get downvoted because it may not necessarily add much to the
discussion, but I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your story. Takes a
lot of courage and it will undoubtedly help someone else (deaf or otherwise).

------
socratease
Have a look at the article someone posted about Swype, from the man who
invented T9. "The man who invented the keyboard, twice."

There is an interesting comment in there about AOL's response to making things
easier for deaf users.

------
wesbrown18
I read your post, David, and I found it very akin to my experiences. In a lot
of ways, I am you -- but fast-forwarded fifteen years. I am in the prime of my
career now, considered to be one of the best in my rather specialized and
intersecting fields of high performance computing and automated malware
analysis; I am a Chief Architect of a startup company, engineering manager of
a small crackerjack development team, and I am Deaf.

I empathize with the feeling of being the last to know things. Unless it is
written via email, IM, or directed at me personally, I do not know it. I have
found a company structure that mitigates that particular issue, in that I am
part of and leading a remote engineering team. There are no members of the
team that share offices, so all communications and 'lunchroom conversations'
actually happen over IM, the phone, or in the group chat room.

For a long time, I was just as isolated as you are -- for many years, I was
the 'hacker in the corner' that you slid food to under the door, along with
tasks to do. I was a security consultant that was given targets to hack, and
write reports. But I did very little customer interaction, by intent and
design. I am old enough that text relay over a TTY was my only option.

I had a US Robotics modem attached to a Sun Sparcstation in my basement, that
was BAUDOT capable. I had GNU screen running, attached to that serial port,
and sent the console up to my office. In this way, I was able to answer and
make calls from anywhere that I had a SSH connection, including my early text-
only RIM Blackberry.

Text relay is awkward and horrible in a lot of ways, and I share your pain. I
can trace the turning point in my career when Video Relay Service started
being offered over the Internet, along with the early model Sorenson
videophones. Because I was able to communicate fluidly via the interpreter,
using voice-carry-over, when neccessary, my coworkers started to see me as
more of a concrete person.

Because of the doors that Video Relay opened, versus text relay, I was able to
emerge from my 'hacker in the corner' persona, and advance to become an
extroverted and respected Principal Consultant who managed client engagements.

I have a pretty cool Tandberg/Cisco E20 Videophone on my desk with built in
VCO. It has a Bluetooth connection to my hearng aids, so when I dial a number,
I get the audio shunted straight to my ears. Further, with the built in VCO,
there is no call complexity in voicing for myself. I just pick up the handset,
or speak at the screen in speakerphone mode.

When I speak, the other hearing people hear my voice. When the hearing people
speak, the sign language interpreter translates what they say; using the
contextual and spatial nature of American Sign Language, the interpreter is
also able to identify which speaker it is with a body shift. Because there is
very little latency versus transcibing, the conversation is natural and fluid.

Two times a week, as engineering manager, I lead the conference call where the
engineering team gets together and gives status updates and issues. I also
handle client and customer calls that require a personal touch from an
engineer.

Reading your post about your frustrations dealing with the phone, I do need to
point out that the easiest path is to accomodate the interviewer or other
people's request for a phone number. All the services that offer
telecommunications access for the deaf are required by the FCC to provide a
real and personal number that anyone can dial.

This is the key factor here -- rather than trying to tell them to not use a
phone, give them a phone number that is linked to the access service of your
choice. This includes CapTel, which is real time transcribing of phone
conversations, by an operator that uses dictation. <http://www.captel.com/>

I know that you do not identify yourself as culturally Deaf, or as a fluent
signer, but American Sign Language interpretation provided by a competent
video relay service agency that is selective about its staff is far more fluid
and latency free than captioned telephone. The interpreter can even indicate
in expression if he or she is unsure about the subject matter -- and more
importantly, the interpreter can convey the tone of voice that the other
person is using at the moment. This is what has allowed me to be an effective
consultant, being able to determine emotion, even by proxy.

As far as love, girls, dating, and marriage, I am married to a Deaf/HoH girl
myself. I keenly empathize with the frustration that is dating when you are
deaf. Dating is supposed to be a nice experience, where you figure out if
you're compatible or not. But if you are concentrating so intently on trying
to understand the other person on a date, then how can you feel the chemistry
or spark that is supposed to happen?

My first date with my eventual wife was a moment of grace, a breath of fresh
air. It was the first date that I've ever been on, that I laughed and felt
comfortable at. Yes, we were nervous, yes, there were some dialectal and
communications difference, but I enjoyed myself and so did she. One date and
then another, and I moved to be closer to her, proposed, and married her.

We primarily sign in our household, because it is the communications method
that is the most relaxing. When we sign, we do not concentrate, or feel
frustrated. When we emerge into the world outside, it is not as terrible a
chore to put on our hearing aids and concentrate intently on hearing people --
because we have our retreat and solititude.

You should not choose not to marry a d/Deaf/HoH girl based on how likely it is
that you will have deaf or hearing children. The majortiy of Children-of-Deaf-
Adults I have met have felt themselves enriched by the experience of being a
CODA, of being truly bilingual in a widely different form of communications.
They find much to laugh about, in the form of communications. By being CODAs,
they are enriched by bilingualism rather than crippled by sign.

I am not advocating against Cued Speech as a primary form of communications;
as a matter of fact, when I think about it, Cued Speech has some advantages
over sign language when it comes to hearing people. It does not require them
to learn an acutal language; it is easier to teach eight handshapes and eight
locations around the face. It is also easier to do Cued Speech and speech
rather than simultaneously doing American Sign Language and English. Cued
Speech is a change of mode rather than a change of language.

The sad reality however is that there will probably never be any form of
telecommunications access that used Cued Speech. I would actually use a Cued
Speech VRS service if it was available, as it does not require me to merge two
linguistic streams in my brain, Spoken English and American Sign Language into
a conversational model. And the alternative, CapTel, doesn't have the same
sideband communications capabilities or the reduced latency that American Sign
Language interpretation offers.

In a nutshell, my message is, there are options to ease your path through
life, including Captel, and VRS. Do not exclude love based on deafness.

Let me know when you're done with Hacker School, and we can discuss whether a
remote job with us might be a good fit for you. We're doing some of the
coolest stuff around over here, building a special-purpose supercomputing
cluster.

------
nadam
As a hacker my first thought after reading this is that how the improvement of
speech recognition technology combined with something like google glasses
could help deaf people.

------
mgkimsal
Interesting that David would blog openly about setting up interviews. My first
assumption was that it was an interview for another job - maybe it wasn't?

------
opminion
Great post in so many ways.

Beyond other deaf people, migrant knowledge workers will know best about what
he is talking about when describing social relationships at work.

------
deafscribe
49-year-old deaf professional here. Used to work as a web dev in the 90's,
until the dot.com crash in 2000. Last gig was working for the Washington Post.

I can relate to everything sanenji's described - I'm quite like him but older.
Been married twice, once to a hard of hearing woman, now with a deaf woman.
Raised two fantastic children, do freelance writing on the side (here:
<https://influentialprose.wordpress.com/> and more recently, here:
<http://unitedrepublic.org/author/kmcleod/>

Web dev work was great starting out. I did all of my early work solo as a
consultant, then joined a firm in Arlington, VA and continued to do projects
solo there. Because I communicated chiefly by e-mail, I got on good terms with
all my co-workers. I didn't join others for lunch for the same reasons Sarenji
mentioned, but I didn't much mind since I love to read and used the time to do
that. I had a robust social life in the deaf community, so after hours I got
my people time.

Everything changed when the firm was bought out by a larger company. The new
management implemented a team approach, which necessitated at least one team
meeting each week. I asked for 'terps, but only got them for the once-monthly
company rally meeting. The real work was coordinated during the weekly
meetings, and I had no clue what was being discussed. That went downhill fast,
and I moved to the Post and stayed there until they began cutbacks.

I've spent the last 10 years working at a residential mental hospital for deaf
patients, which has been a real adventure.

I just want to say to Sarenji - love is where you find it. Whether it's a
hearing or deaf person, run with it. Just remember this; no one person is an
island. Your mate comes with a network of friends, family and work, and you'll
become part of that network whether you enjoy it or not. Chose carefully.

Kids - most children of deaf parents are born hearing. Mine were. They'll
definitely benefit from growing bilingual. Don't worry about it. If it happens
you get deaf kids, you'll be the best kind of Daddy they can possibly have,
cuz you've been there and done that.

I tutored English at Gallaudet University for a while, and once worked at a
residential deaf school. I've got deaf friends who are at that (not
mythological) 4th grade reading level and others who read and write probably
better than most hearing folks.

The common denominator I've found among deaf adults with strong English skills
is they were exposed early and often to English with their parents, through
reading stories. Some used ASL to explain the English, some just read the
story together in signed English, but either way, early and regular exposure
makes all the difference.

I think it was Helen Keller who observed that being blind cuts you off from
things, and being deaf cuts you off from people. Me, I balance my life by
socializing in the deaf community and doing what I can professionally in
different areas, so I don't feel isolated.

Make the most of your abilities, and keep learning, all the time - it's far
better than being bored.

Given all the accommodations and opportunities available for deaf people in
the U.S., we probably enjoy the best environment any deaf folks who have
walked this earth have ever known. Which is not to say it's perfect, but it's
good enough to grab with both hands and build a satisfying life.

~~~
wesbrown18
Amen to this -- my parents knew that if I was deaf, that I would need to learn
by other means, ergo, reading. My father read to me every day since I was a
child -- it did not matter that I did not understand him, it was the
association and encouragement that helped. I was behind as far as literacy,
until I started taking a real interest at 8. By the time I was 11, I was
reading Star Trek Giant Novels.

------
cafard
Well, there are hearing women who have ASL fluency--or whom I imagine to have
ASL fluency, rather.

------
Gupie
What is the potential for technology to help, some sort of combination of
Google glasses and siri?

------
xxqs
David, you're also isolated from silly talks and silly pop music which most of
us have to hear around. Also I have no doubt in your career, as you have to be
stronger than others to compensate for your challenge.

just trying to find positive sides in your uneasy life :)

I also bookmarked your github page, as there may be some funded work popping
up in some future

------
coofluence
David: Thank you for sharing your story. I was moved by it. Best wishes to
you.

------
redouane
thanks for sharing the story, that was so deep. i cannot imagine how
frustrating it is to be different(deaf, handicapped) in a world that(mostly)
is not, and how many simple things we take for granted.

------
hellerbarde
Yay, this is heartwarming. David, you are awesome! :)

------
danhoh
Amen Bro. Amen.

------
benipk
As someone who's been deaf since 18 months of age (Meningitis), I feel your
pain David. I'm fairly lucky, as my hearing loss means I'm just within the
bracket of being able to use a hearing aid, which are the most powerful ones
on the market, but I suspect within a decade or two I'm probably going to need
a cochlear implant myself.

The difficulty for me is being between two worlds, I can speak well enough
that most people don't realise I'm deaf, which creates its own problems as
they won't compensate for speaking to a deaf person, even if they know how.
Since I was always able to hear with hearing aids, I never learnt to sign as I
and others didn't feel it was needed. Lip-reading and a degree of hearing as
enough to get by. So when you can't hear well enough to be completely at ease
among normal people, but you can't sign either, so you're barred from the
totally deaf community too.

I'm in my 30s now, and I've been through the denial, self-loathing and social
ostracisation through my teens at school and 20s in University that made life
pretty hard. As you've pointed out in your article, people don't intentionally
exclude you if you're deaf - but if you miss every other word in a
conversation it gets embarrassing asking people to repeat themselves every few
seconds! A work environment isn't too bad in my experience, social
environments are a whole 'nother thing though. Pubs? Clubs? Even a quiet cafe
usually has too high a level of background noise to understand someone...

That said though, don't be disheartened when it comes to relationships. I've
had 3 'proper' relationships over the years, the first wasn't until I was
older than you are now. All of them have been positive, and my girlfriend in
each case has never had an issue with my hearing. If someone wants to get to
know you, they will make small sacrifices, small changes in their behaviour if
that's what it takes to get to know you. If they're not prepared to make any
changes, well, chances are they're not worth knowing in the first place!
Simple things like "face me when you're speaking", "Don't talk with your mouth
covered", "Make sure you have my attention before you start speaking" are not
that hard to do, and remember: It says a lot about the person in question if
they can't even be bothered with such simple things.

Sadly, you may find that your deafness will shape what kind of job you
ultimately feel most comfortable in. It'd be nice to think that in this day
and age, any job should be open to someone with a disability, but that's
certainly not going to be the case. Personally, I'm self-employed with my own
company after dabbling in the Biotech industry after leaving Uni.

The key thing is, there are awesome people out there who will be good friends.
It's just harder to find them for you than it is for normal people. I'm lucky
in that the friends I made in High School are still, 15 years later, the best
friends I have ever made. Even if it sucks to go into social situations
because being the guy "sitting quietly in the corner" gets old very fast, know
that every so often you will hit it off with someone and it'll make up for all
the crappy times!

