The Struggles Deaf and Hard of Hearing People Face

By: Jacob Martinez

Everyday people communicate with each other through texting, calls, and social media. However, there is a select group of people that may struggle to communicate because of their disability. Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HoH) people must communicate differently than others because some apps do not support their disability. Apps that do support them would include the WhatsApp as well as video chat apps like facetime. Another great app that supports HoH people as well as deaf people could be Instagram and snapchat because communicating through social media is easy. There are a lot of features that support all kinds of disabilities and I feel like most people do not realize that because they are not put in the same shoes as a deaf person.

For this week's reading, I chose Nomy Mitman and Nicholas A. John’s article on "Deaf and Hard of Hearing Smartphone Users: Intersectionality and Penetration of Ableist Communication Norms.” This article explains the stigma on people who are HoH or may be on the spectrum of being Deaf. As explained in the beginning of the article, people who suffer from these disabilities get treated differently. Any person who is not able to communicate or speak, will be an outcast. They will be seen as socially incompetent because of their disability, making their life harder than it already is.

To further understand how HoH and Deaf people felt, the authors conducted a study that took 20 interviews that were in-depth with people who were deaf of HoH. These participants were both Male and Female ages 19 to 72. This interview process was conducted into different phases. It started off by asking these participants about what their relationship is like with their friends and relative, and how they communicated. They would soon ask about the first time they bought their phone, how they felt and learned to use it. The last phase of the interview was about their hearing and auditory status.

From this interview process, they found that regular calls were ineffective for Deaf and HoH people to use and communicate with others. They learned that people who do struggle with HoH have to learn to use other apps to communicate with people more effectively. Another important face that the article brought up was that these people who struggle with hearing may be seen differently with their identity and auditory status because of their lack of ability to answer phone calls.

Overall, as a person who is always on their phone, I never thought about people who are HoH or Deaf. I would have not of thought about the different apps they have to use because they are not able to use the regular call application. I would also never think about how different they would be treated because they can’t use the regular apps that most people use today. Their friends and relatives would have to switch apps every time they have to reach out to that person because they are unable to call. I hope that in the future there will be a ton of new apps that support Deaf people and HoH people.