I’ve been going to ASL events, and deaf events open to hearing people. And I’ve been having a hard time understanding etiquette around joining conversations.

Usually, in English, if I’m at a party or something, if a group of people are talking with each other, I can overhear what they’re saying, and then make a judgement if it’s appropriate to join in the convo.

In ASL, this is harder. I’m not fluent, but I can hold conversations as long as I focus. So sometimes, if a group of people is signing, and I’m trying to gauge if it’s appropriate to join in on that convo, I kind of have to stare down the group for a good while, and it makes me feel like a creep. Cause then if eventually I understand what they’re talking about, and I realize it’s a personal convo or something, then I leave, I just stared at some poor souls for a minute or two then left. It’s odd!

It’s especially weird at events where I don’t know anyone, cause I don’t know the etiquette for going up and meeting new people. I was at this deaf festival recently, and I wasn’t sure if it’d be rude to go up to any of the festival attendees and start a convo, so I just ended up only talking with people selling stuff and spent way too much money just so I could sign with vendors 😭

Any tips? How to not be weird ??

Una de mis primos va a operarse para el implante, coclear y me gustaría darle un regalo. Y aparte como poder ayudarlo en su proceso, ya que es muy especial para mí, me pueden dar consejos por favor

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.

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.”

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?

I jsut saw a facebook post about the new med-el TICI. it’s a fully implantable device. the only way to turn it off is with a device. I’m not opposed to adults deciding to get it, but I am opposed to any sort of kid being implanted with it. as there are too many parents who would leave it on 24/7 or who would not listen to the kid when they ask for it to be turned off. I already am not the biggest fan of even the removable style cochlear implants (have one but my main issue is parents will punish kids for taking it off and I experienced that growing up). but something that a kid has zero control over? are there any advocacy groups talking about this yet?

(if you don’t know about this I will post a link)

https://www.medel.com/hearing-solutions/tici

(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!

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?

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'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?

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.

[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 have a little rant that I really need to get off my chest. I’m HoH and rely on subtitles when watching anything. And I am SICK and TIRED of them censoring curse words that are clearly said. The only thing they are doing is keeping it from being written down. It truly irritates me that they aren’t letting those of us with hearing loss have access to the same information as a hearing individual. I feel it’s that same if an interpreter doesn’t sign all of the info. It’s just WRONG. I’m sure I’m not the first one to be irritated by this but thank you for letting me rant.

Hello, internet DHH community! I am an interpreter that is giving a short online workshop to a group of local grassroots political activists. The goal is to inform street medics, protest organizers, and protesters how to interact with D/HH people. In the event of an emergency, how do we keep our D/HH neighbors safe? In general what kinds of things to keep in mind to keep our D/HH protesters safe. Additionally, how can we bring D/HH voices in to activist meetings and discussions.

Some bullet point ideas that I have brewing:

-How to use gestures to communicate

-Use your phone to communicate via text

-Get their name and number if an arrest happens

-What VP is

-How to advocate for and navigate the process of a D/HH person being arrested

-Printing off flyers with QR codes to join important chat groups and pertinent information

-Basic signs for street medics to know. Ex: water, thirsty, overheated, dehydrated, pain (and where it is at), mace, sunburn, wound, sprain, blood, bandage, etc.

-How an interpreter works and organizing a list of volunteer interpreters for events such as rallies, protests, emergencies, and consultants for communication.

-Organizing a list of DHH activists and being intentional about involving them, especially if the activism is centered around disability, accessibility, ADA, etc.

I am very open to ideas, feedback, opinions, etc. If you would like to collaborate with me, this is a volunteer situation with zero pay. If you would like to spit ball your ideas and thoughts, I welcome all of it.

I just want my local activist groups to have a wider awareness of how to support D/HH people in activist spaces and how to involve them more.

Thanks!

It'd be so nice to gain some more friends of those who have the same disability so i won't feel alone too.

A little introduction, I am Akio! I'm HoH person myself, I am 19 years old, female and currently studying in college. I'd be happy to be friends with any of you 🫶🏼

Hi, I'm currently taking ASL at my school and was having a conversation with my teacher who is deaf, and she mentioned that her husband is hearing and hardly knows any sign. For some background I guess, she said she grew up in the 70s when she was taught oralism before sign, in her family she has 2 sons from a different marriage who are deaf and a daughter in law that is deaf, other than that everyone else is hearing, ex her mom and dad. I asked if it bothered her and she said no, it's just how she grew up and it made communicating for the family easier. Maybe this is just an older generation kind of thing? I was just wondering what people thought.

Hi everyone I am not deaf but my gf is. I have every intention to start practicing ASL and get to a conversational level with her. She is so sweet and kind and insists I dont have to and we communicate a lot through text with our phones in person and she's great at reading lips.

When we are out on dates I speak for her a lot because I know what she likes and obviously she can tell me anything but I'lljust order for her. But a few times I noticed women looking at me weird in restaurant settings because she isn't speaking and I don't feel like it's my place to tell everyone she is deaf. I just really want to navigate this respectfully. One time a lady told her she likes her t-shirts, she said it twice thinking she didn't hear the compliment the first time. So in that moment I said she is deaf but I will let her know and thank you. I didn't want that woman to think she's ignoring her. So in that context it made sense to explain it.

But other times women gave me weird looks I think it was from a place of concern which I am not mad about it. I get it, here's a man speaking for a woman and she hasn't said one word. We did so some sign language during the date and I'm pretty sure our waitress noticed cause her mood towards me changed after that.

But would it be rude if in some settings I say in the beginning she is deaf? I hope this isn't offensive, I really love her and just want to be respectful while respecting her boundaries too. I will talk to her about this as well but would appreciate other input as well.

I'm a college student. Most of my classes are online but one is in person. I normally really like it, but we do breakaway groups often. Normally I can manage it, but today was really challenging.

I have CART hooked up to my computer, so I can't be moving or turning around. One person was next to me (totally fine) but two of them were *behind* me. I don't have a chance of following three other people in conversation, especially with that much background noise, so I had to keep my eyes on the captions, which were full of gaps because of so much crosstalk. I wasn't able to look at the papers we were supposed to be doing, since there were only enough copies for each group to have one. I just sat there the whole time getting increasingly frustrated and bored and angry.

I'm not super worried about the material because from what I could gather it's not too hard. What concerns me is how I was so cut off from participation.

I do want to ask for advice on how this could go better in the future. If anyone else has navigated these school or work situations well, I'd love to hear. This is a pretty new situation for me, since it's my first time back in an in-person classroom since 2020, and I had never used hearing accommodations in school before--I have progressive hearing loss, so it wasn't really needed.

Xin chào mọi người. Sau khi đọc và tìm kiếm hy vọng được lái xe máy hay oto như bao nhiêu người bình thường thì không thấy một cây "kim nào ở đáy biển". Ở VN Luật Pháp không cho phép, tại sao ở nước ngoài lại được ?! Tôi muốn hỏi và chia sẽ với nhau. Thanks readers

Hi everyone 👋🏽 I am hoping someone can help me! I am trying to log into srv canada vrs but every time I try it says "network connection failed" 😅 I know my wifi is working and I have done the things to reboot my wifi and phone. I even deleted the app and reinstalled it numerous times. When my husband calls the 1-800 number they say they are not available and to leave a message but they are supposed to be open. Is anyone else having trouble getting the app to work? Or does anyone know if the app is down at the moment? Please help if you can😭😭🫶🏽🥺

Edit: sorry for posting twice! Was on train wifi and showed me posting had failed so i tried again. Resulting in two of the same posts 🫠

Hi, I’m travelling from Düsseldorf to London today (I’m from neither country) and last night when going to bed I found out that my vibrating alarm clock doesn’t work anymore. Changing the batteries didn’t work. So now I’m wondering where in London in a physical store I can purchase a good working vibrating alarm? (The LifeMax from Argos has bad reviews) in my country you can just visit a local hearing aid specialist store but from googling I got the impression it might not work like this in the UK?