In my last article I had a discussion with my friend Ulli about the lives of deaf and hard of hearing German young people.
I continued the discussion with Stephan Wilke, my hard of hearing colleague who is responsible for the Department of Social Policy at Deutscher Schwerhoerigenbund e.V., which is a large and quite old self-help organization. Founded in 1901, it has regional and local chapters all over Germany.
We decided to focus on the situation of hard of hearing and deaf people in Berlin as a simplified overview of 16 German lands in a single conversation is impossible.
To begin with, there is no statistics on how many deaf and hard of hearing students go to special or regular schools. "Only people who have a hearing loss of at least 50 percent are included in the statistics. A person who has 50 percent of their hearing remaining qualifies for getting disability status, can get a disability card, is officially a person with a disability and falls into the statistics," Stephan explains. "But what about other people with hearing loss? Or those who do not want to be considered as disabled?" If a hard of hearing/deaf German wants to have a technical support or a personal assistant, he or she must have a disability status.
"So we have the statistics that there are approximately 286,000 deaf people who possess disability status in Berlin. Most of them are prelingually, profoundly deaf." Overall, it is estimated that in the Federal Republic of Germany there are about 14 million people with some degree of hearing loss, of which 2.5 million are hearing aid users (as the data from the Deutscher Schwerhoerigenbund e.V. indicates).
There seem to be no special colleges or universities exclusively for the deaf in Germany, but many study at the Institute of German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf (Institut für Deutsche Gebärdensprache und Kommunikation Gehörloser), based at Hamburg University (www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/English.html). The main interests of the Institute include working on sign language dictionaries in such fields as computer terminology, psychology, home economics, social work and others; working on CD software for sign language acquisition and creating a bibliography of sign language linguistics.
We followed with perhaps the most challenging and at the same time, inspiring topic - access to technical devices for people with hearing loss.
Technology in the workplace and at universities
Assistive technology at universities or at work is provided depending on the severity of hearing loss. At universities, the council responsible for students with disabilities is expected to provide a student with an FM system or another device. At a workplace, the state body responsible for integration (Integrationsamt) goes through a long bureaucratic procedure of decision-making on what kind of support is needed by a person with a hearing loss. Deaf or hard of hearing people are entitled to have a personal assistant at work who helps answering and making answering phone calls, making notes, and so on.
"I had a problem with my University professor who did not want to wear a FM system for me," recalls Stephan. "What could I do? We do not have disability counsellors at German universities like in the US, and the council responsible for students with disabilities is nearly toothless... so I had to find my own way to cope with the situation. I was lucky it was not a required subject in my program."
As for the speech-to-text service at meetings, study or work, the common problem is that there are not enough qualified typists in Germany.
Some employment challenges
"Today I got a call from a hard of hearing woman who applied to the job agency and wrote on her resume 'I am hard of hearing'," says Stephan. The agency told her to remove that phrase. Stephan goes on, "Now I am trying to find out why the agency wants her to conceal her disability. If a person is not recognized as hard of hearing or deaf in the workplace, he/she cannot apply for a personal assistant or assistive listening devices. And if an emergency breaks out or an accident happens, who is responsible for the safety of a hard of hearing / deaf person?"
In Rheinland-Westfalen, Integrationsamt decided to cut the use of personal assistants since this service requires a hefty amount of funding, not only for the monthly payment, which can be as much as 1100 Euros, but also costly insurance. An idea they offered? Providing jobs with less communication for hard of hearing people. Ideas like training hard of hearing people to become fitness trainers. Their reasoning: no assistance will be needed by fitness trainers, right? "We do not like the idea of these projects," says Stephan, "because as a result, hard of hearing people are told to not be independent. Another idea which was born purely out of good intentions is a series of 'disability workshops' for people with disabilities - which is essentially like working in a specific limited area, and after all, is not an inclusive approach."
Deaf, hard of hearing or hearing-impaired?
Stefan nods and comments, "I do not like to say: 'hard of hearing' or 'deaf', as the border between the concepts of deaf/hard of hearing is more vague and fluid than ever before, due to technological advances and other factors. I prefer to relate to people indicating their communication mode, oral or sign (lautsprachlich orientierte Hörgeschädigte or gebärdenspralich orientierte Hörgeschädigte)."
The talk went on, with an update from Stephan- he is now working on a better access to hearing aids which has become a painful issue for many Germans: only 400 Euros of a hearing aid purchase is covered by the state. If one receives a second hearing aid, a 20 % discount must be given for it, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, this discount is not always applied. The next step for Stephan is to discover effective ways of lobbying to pass relevant legislation in all the lands of Germany, enabling Germans to obtain high quality hearing aids. This was an impetus for us, the young hard of hearing segment of the international community, to discuss how our organization IFHOHYP (the International Federation of Hard of Hearing Young People) could put forward the issues pertinent in Germany.
We concluded that as non-profit organizational activists from different countries, we both have common problems to work on together - both at a national and international level.
And I do wish Stephan well in his pursuit of fairness and equality!
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