Deaf Lip Reading

What many people do not understand is that just because you are deaf does not mean you are disabled. There are schools and entire communities for the Deaf; the largest being in California, New York, and DC. There are many professions that Deaf can be successful in; Doctors, actors, surgeons, and teachers to name a few. Although it will certainly be harder, there are millions of Deaf individuals who lead happy, successful

The book also describes how life has changed for deaf adults through the years. Previously, many deaf adults were not able to get jobs in many places, because there were not many places that were accepting to them. These days, however, almost every business or company is looking for those that are fluent in American Sign Language, due to the simple fact that they would be able to accommodate that many more people and earn more money for their business. Also, there were not many outlets for deaf adults to use in relation to entertainment or basic needs, because again, mostly everything was catered to hearing adults only. However, they have recently developed many different ways for the deaf to communicate with the hearing and with one another, including TTY, full-keyboard, and internet phones and closed-captions on television stations and movies.

This semester I have learned a lot about deaf culture. I learned that deaf people do not want to be pitied because they are deaf, they like to live their lives to the fullest extent as possible. People in the deaf culture do everything that people in the hearing culture do, sometimes the way they do it slightly differs. Such as everyday ways of life, things as simple as listening to music, having conversations, and watching TV. Instead of being able to hear the music, they are able to feel the beat and vibrations made by the music. They have conversations by signing and making facial expressions, instead of using words; and the same with watching TV, instead of listening to the TV they read captions or sometimes even read is. The same things we do, as a hearing person, they just do it differently. I also found it interesting that people in the deaf culture are a lot more direct and friendly, than people in the hearing culture.

Aside from communication and language, there are also such things as beliefs and customs that have lent towards the deaf and deaf-blind cultures. A positive attitude toward being deaf is typical in Deaf cultural groups. Deafness is not generally considered a condition that needs to be fixed. Culturally Deaf people value the use of natural sign languages that exhibit their own grammatical conventions, such as American Sign Language and British Sign Language, over signed versions of English or other spoken languages. Deaf culture in the United States tends to be collectivist rather than individualist; culturally Deaf people value the group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture#Values_and_beliefs). Culturally Deaf people have rules of etiquette for such things as, getting attention, walking through signed conversations, and otherwise politely negotiating a signing environment. It is also commonplace for them to arrive early for certain events, to ensure an optimum

Watching the film Through Deaf Eyes was eye opening to Deaf history and culture. The film was a great introduction and snapshot of what it is like to be Deaf and to live in not only the Deaf world but to also be a part of the hearing world. Watching the film and learning the history and the achievements that the Deaf have overcome was inspiring. It was also depressing to see the kind of oppression that Deaf people have faced and within their own community. One of the biggest things that I took away from the movie was that Deaf people can do anything they wish to do, besides hear. Seeing the way they stood up and demanded a Deaf president of Gallaudet University and that helping to influence the introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act was inspiring. Whenever I would think of what it would be like to be Deaf, I thought of the immediate loses that a Deaf person would have and that just isn’t the way to look at it.

In sensory loss (touch/ mobility, vision, hearing) can have a big impact to an individual like for example in mobility, the person can not feed or dress himself, or can not participate in an activity and worst if he can not attend to his personal daily living. Another is eyesight or vision, the person who suffers from this disability have a very hard time communicating or even to express themselves to what they want to do and wishes without the help of other person. This case is the same with a person who is deaf or can not hear anything. And sometimes when you

There are a lot of pros of going to Deaf School but it also comes with a lot of cons. The pros of attending Deaf School is that you are surrounded by other children who speak the same language as you do and you are not the only student who have hearing problems but one of the major cons in attending the Deaf School system is that students are graduating with a lower reading levels and writing skills compared to the students in public schools. This may be occurring because Deaf Schools often get teachers who are unable to properly communicate in ASL. Perhaps, having a place designed for a specific disability does more harm than good because people lower the standard when they hear the word disability. Being the only Deaf student in my school gave me the attention that I needed in order to flourish in both spoken and written language. I was expected to thrive like the hearing students in my school. By my father’s simple decision, changed the way I am able to understand and communicate information in the written

They have to communicate using their hands and faicial expressions, and have to find ways to talk with non-signing, hearing people. They face daily challenges that we wouldn’t even think about. They have to drive cars without being able to hear, they have to pay attention to their surroundings when driving and pay attention. But, deaf people are actually better drivers than hearing people becuase they are so used to paying so close attention to everything (Deaf Culture Facts That Might Surprise You). In order to understand non-signing hearing people, the deaf has to learn to read lips. This can be very difficult because some people talk very fast and deaf people cannot follow. Also, only about 30% of English Spoken words are distinguishible by lip reading

Deaf people have influenced our lives and the lives of our deaf people because they show us that anything is possible. Just because you are different from the rest of the world doesn't make you different in a bad way. Many deaf Actors and stars show us that it isn’t impossible to follow your dreams do something that can change the world.

The Book I decided to read is called “Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf”. In this book the author Oliver Sacks basically focuses on Deaf history and the community of the deaf developed toward linguistic self-sufficiency. Sacks is a Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He became interested in the problem of how deaf children acquire language after reviewing a book by Harlan Lane. The book was titled “When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf”. This book was first published in 1984 and was published again in 1989. Before reading Harlan’s book Sacks did not know any sign language. The book encouraged him to begin studying sign language. Sacks became extremely interested on how the deaf learn to communicate with the ability of sound being nonexistent. He wanted to know what this process may tell us about the nature of language. Seeing Voices is made up of three chapters, the history of the deaf, a discussion of language and the brain, and an evaluation of the problems behind the student strike that occurred at Gallaudet University, in March of 1988.

Before I took the American Deaf Culture Quiz I thought I would have known a lot but come to my surprise I got only 2 full questions correct. I was surprised on how much information I learned about the Deaf Community for example, that American Sign Language relates to French Sign Language. Also I had found that 90% of Deaf people marry other Deaf people. From this test I learned some rules that apply in the Deaf world that would be totally different in the hearing world. I thought that walking through a conversation would be considered rude, but in their world it’s impolite to just sit there and wait till they are done signing. Likewise their facial expression us hearing people would assume it shows emotion when really it shows grammar.

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

In mainstream American society, we tend to approach deafness as a defect. Helen Keller is alleged to have said, "Blindness cuts people off from things; deafness cuts people off from people." (rnib.org) This seems a very accurate description of what Keller's world must have been. We as hearing people tend to pity deaf people, or, if they succeed in the hearing world, admire them for overcoming a severe handicap. We tend to look at signing as an inferior substitute for "real" communication. We assume that all deaf people will try to lip-read and we applaud deaf people who use their voices to show us how far they have come from the grips of their disability. Given this climate, many hearing people are surprised, as I was at

American Annals of the Deaf is an educational journal that is committed to providing educational experiences of high quality as well as related services for the deaf. This journal has been around for over 150 years, and over time they have been dedicated to making sure that children and adults who are deaf or hard of hearing are receiving quality assistance for their disability (NEED CITATION). In July 1996, they published a scholarly article in response to a survey Catherine Gillespie and Sandra Twardosz conducted about the literacy environment and different practices that children are receiving in a residential school for the deaf.

Sign language teaches deaf children to use the other senses such as sight to communicate with others. ASL centers on several techniques such as “hand shape, position, and movement, body movements, gestures, facial expressions, and other visual cues to form its words” instead of sounds and tones in the spoken language (“American Sign Language”).