An opportunity to learn and to share
Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said: "The only true luxury I know is a luxury of communication." For deaf and hard of hearing people who encounter communication obstacles at least once every day (if not every hour), this saying conveys an especially profound meaning.
Over 500 hard of hearing delegates and consumers of different walks of life, race and ethnicity, from Vietnam to the US to Australia, gathered this July for the International Federation of the Hard of Hearing (IFHOH) Congress, A Global Community of Communications that was held for the first time in North America. The event was also co-hosted by the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA).
How can we effectively raise awareness about hearing loss?
How can we improve the quality of life of hard of hearing people through policies?
How can we find hearing aid-compatible cell phones?
What are the recent hearing aid technology advancements?
These questions, and many others, were answered at the IFHOH Congress workshops. Congress discussions touched upon multidimensional issues of communication for people with hearing loss. Those issues included, but were not limited to, hearing loss stigma and empowerment, hearing loss issues in the workplace, use of cochlear implants by adults, and ways to combine technology and bilingualism.
Mingling in the crowd at receptions, one could talk to the first hard of hearing pilot who flew around the world, hearing loss researchers from around the world, hard of hearing activists, artists, and representatives of large technology companies.
Key highlights of the Congress
The story of flying all over the world as a hard of hearing pilot was retold by Johan Hammarström as the opening keynote speech for the Congress.
The President of IFHOH, Jan-Peter Strömgren, as well as former IFHOH President Marcia Dugan and Charlotta Göller shed light on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The importance of the Convention for hard of hearing people worldwide is that it is a legally binding international human rights treaty that makes people with disabilities visible in the human rights arena and reinforces already existing rights for people with disabilities. While the Convention does not directly refer to people who have hearing loss or who identify as hard of hearing, its references to people with disabilities include both deaf and hard of hearing individuals.
A few articles in the Convention are particularly relevant for people with hearing loss. Article 2 (Definition of communication) touches upon the display of text and communication technology; Article 9 stresses the importance of information and communication accessibility; Article 24 discusses the most appropriate methods of communication for the individual. Article 27, centering on employment, addresses reasonable accommodations in the workplace. The work that went towards creating the Convention was partly conducted by the International Disability Alliance (IDA). The IDA is comprised of 8 international and 2 regional disability organisations, including the IFHOH, World Federation of the Deaf and World Federation of the DeafBlind.
There were many other notable highlights of the Congress. Launching the Virtual Institute for Hearing Accessibility Research was definitely one of them. The brainchild of Dr.Charles Laszlo of the CHHA, the Virtual Institute allows researchers and practitioners of hearing loss-related issues unite in an online consortium that would serve as a centre for research, training, and dissemination of information in the field of hearing accessibility. This mission includes the coordination of collaboration among a broad range of disciplines, professions, industries, and organizations of hard of hearing people to promote hearing accessibility around the world. The initiative was met with an ovation.
The Swedish workshop on bilingualism changed minds for many who visited it, and it raised controversial questions (see my previous article on bilingualism in Sweden). It is my hope that bilingualism practices will be supported in more and more countries and applied wisely.
Three days of the Congress saw many more workshops and discussions which I would never rate as "less" or "more important" -- all of them were valuable! I would have fully experienced all of them if I had been able to split into a dozen people at once.
Communication, communication...
I had an educational role at the Congress, too: preparing and running a workshop on behalf of IFHOHYP. The first part of the workshop presented the results of the pilot survey on the situation of hard of hearing youth across Europe. Another part was highly interactive. In this part, we conducted a role-play on intercultural learning -- and the participants were pleasantly surprised by this unconventional change of format from speech to role-play. After experiencing funny and confusing moments of communication in the roles of "wild tribe" and "researchers" groups, participants discussed how intercultural differences and hearing loss affect each other in our cross-border work towards improving the quality of life for those who are hard-of-hearing.
How do cultural differences affect understanding of hearing loss in different countries? Do hard of hearing people have their own culture? In which countries do people conceal their hearing problems? And what terms do we use to identify people with hearing loss in different cultures? These were the questions that participants discussed in small groups. Interestingly enough, in Russia, Laos and the UK, "there are no hard of hearing people." You are only 'deaf' or 'hearing', as my Swedish colleague put it. An Israeli participant said that when he started working with the Europeans, it took him a long time to adjust to how they work and communicate (conducting meetings, writing emails and discussing projects)-- "Sometimes I thought they were hypocrites, but then I understood I was wrong." Both the tension of intercultural learning and many different ways of speaking English, compounded with a hearing loss, may often create ambiguous situations in international work. "I never had a chance to think about these issues and they are very important to all of us," said Ahiya Kamara, IFHOH Vice President.
Communication and its methods grow and expand: bilingual, electronic, oral...The trick is to use them to the benefit of as many people with hearing loss as possible. Then, and only then, the luxury of communication will truly belong to us.
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