Student Uses Hearing Loss To Motivate Others

VIDEO [CC] - A Scott County college student who was born Deaf is achieving things others thought were impossible.



WATE KNOXVILLE - After two surgeries that allowed her to hear and speak, for the first time she is hoping all of her accomplishments will show people hearing loss doesn’t have to hold anyone back.



WATE 6 On Your Side spoke with the student and her mom about the hearing implants that changed her life.



Before she had implant surgery, she tried to use hearing aids because if we could get benefit from that then would’ve been wonderful but unfortunately the hearing aids just didn’t work for her,” said Melissa Roberts Cheyenne’s Mother.

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18-year-old Cheyenne Roberts received her first cochlear implant from Advance Bionics at just 15-months-old, and her second when she was 12. Afterwards, she had to learn how to hear and speak for the very first time.



“I was a cheerleader and I was able to hear everybody else cheer and hear what was going on at the game so cochlear implants just really helped me,” said Cheyenne Roberts... Read more: http://wate.com/2015/09/13/college-student-uses-hearing-loss-to-motivate-others/

Cochlear Controversy Dramatized In ‘Sound’

Deaf News: The world-premiere play “Sound” explores the controversy over cochlear implants for the Deaf.

SEATTLE TIMES - To hear? To speak? To sign? Those are the questions.



Deaf children in America are eligible for a procedure that can significantly expand their ability to hear. It is a cochlear implant, and rather than amplify sounds like hearing aids do, it works by directly stimulating the auditory nerve in the brain.



By 2012, about 96,000 adults and children in the U.S. alone had undergone the procedure.



Yet while many have hailed it as a breakthrough that not only can turn up the volume but also help Deaf children develop speech, not everyone is cheering.



“There are a lot of emotional feelings about CIs (cochlear implants) in the Deaf community,” explained Howie Seago, a Deaf Tacoma-bred theater artist and co-director of the new play “Sound,” which debuts this week at ACT Theatre.



“Many Deaf people feel that the doctors and other ‘professionals’ in the field of deafness consider us ‘defective’ and need to be fixed,” Seago commented by email.



“They stress this ad nauseam to the parents and do not fully educate them as to the range of communications options available. They almost always leave out the benefits of using sign language with their Deaf child.”



The conflict over whether children in particular need the device intrigued Seago’s co-director, Desdemona Chiang, when she read an early draft of hearing playwright Don Nguyen’s drama, “Sound.” It portrays the heated dispute between a Deaf father and his non-Deaf ex-wife over whether to try to restore their daughter’s hearing with CIs... Read more: http://seattletimes.com/entertainment/theater/cochlear-controversy-dramatized-in-sound/

What It's Like To Be A Deaf Novelist

Deaf News - ‘Sometimes I turn off my hearing aids and dip below the surface of the sound.’ Sara Nović explains the challenges of being a Deaf author and why deafness is still used as a synonym for stupidity.

The Guardian - Sara Nović's first novel has recently become an audiobook to which I will not listen. The characters have been assigned voices and accents and inflections that I’ll never hear. This is not a complaint, exactly; to have written a book that someone wants to publish in any and all formats is a writer’s dream. But to hold some disc or drive that contains a thing I made, transformed into a new thing I can no longer understand, is a predicament in which few writers find themselves.



This disconnect will appear with increasing frequency as I embark on a series of literary events following the launch of my novel. As an audience member I have been to my share of readings in New York. I go because I am in love with books; I go to be with my friends. But even as a spectator they require a lot of concentration, and sometimes when I’ve worked myself into a cross-eyed headache I turn off my hearing aids and dip below the surface of the sound, let myself drift in the quiet. At my own events I won’t have the choice to opt out.



So far I have read in public only three times, each distressing in the regular ways (an audience!), with the added terror of exposing an increasingly unknowable part of myself – my voice. I can feel my words in my chest and mouth, but can’t be sure of what they sound like out in the world. As far as I’m concerned my voice has no echo; it does not stick to the tape recording. What does it mean to perform for an audience with such limited control of your output?



Books have always provided me with a sense of solace and companionship when I found the hearing world overwhelming. Growing up I filled notebooks with the things I was afraid to say aloud. Libraries, too, seem designed for me – a place where one isn’t supposed to talk, equality under the rule of silence... Read More: theguardian.com/books/2015/may/23/what-its-like-to-be-a-deaf-novelist