UNDERSTANDING DEAFNESS AND THE DEAF

“WHAT MATTERS DEAFNESS OF THE EAR
WHEN THE MIND HEARS?
THE ONE TRUE DEAFNESS……,
THE INCURABLE DEAFNESS,
IS THAT OF THE MIND”
Ferdinand Battier

The above quote sums up the truth about deafness and the hearing impaired. It is an undisputed fact that of all the handicapped conditions that affect individuals, deafness is the most misunderstood and evokes the least sympathy.
The reason for this is because deafness is an invisible disability. Unlike blindness and physical disability, you cannot see a deaf person and immediately know that he is deaf. The average deaf person looks like everyone else. His inability to respond to sound stimuli is what actually betrays him as being deaf. Even then it may take time for one to comprehend that the individual in question is deaf. The problem is made worse if the individual can talk.
By way of definition, deafness is a condition of inability to learn sound in the normal way. A deaf person is one who cannot hear speech or sound with or without amplification. Hearing impairment is another term used to describe individuals whose hearing is defective. The term includes the deaf and hard of hearing
The hard of hearing are those individuals who have remnant hearing sufficient to hear speech with or without the use of a hearing aid. Individuals who were born deaf or who lost their hearing before developing speech and language are known as “pre-lingual deaf”. These individuals have in addition to the problem of inability to hear, the problem of inability to talk and to use written language effectively. Those individuals who lost their hearing after they have developed speech and language are known as “post-lingual deaf”. Their major problem is lack of auditory feedback. They may also have the problem of poor pronunciation (depending on the age at onset of deafness).
It will be stating the obvious to say that the conditions of deafness vary from person to person. Consequently, the behaviours and characteristics exhibited by deaf individuals vary depending on the type and degree of hearing impairment sustained. In other words, individuals who sustain a hearing impairment before they have learnt to speak behave differently from those who lost their hearing after they have developed speech and language. Most often, individuals who become deaf later in life are often not easily identified because of their ability to speak (in most cases) fluently and to speech-read. For those born deaf or who became deaf before they developed speech and language, their inability to speak often serve as an indication mark to the fact that the person is hearing impaired. It is pertinent to know that the inability to speak by the individual does not mean that he is dumb, dumbness is a different disability. It is therefore wrong to refer to a deaf person as “deaf and dumb”.
The dumb are those who have aphonic problem or whose vocal cord is not functioning. The dumb can hear but cannot speak or utter a word, whereas the deaf cannot hear but can utter sounds. It is only in rare circumstances that one can come across an individual who is both hearing and speech impaired. It should be noted that the hearing impaired person considers it an insult to be referred to as “deaf and dumb”.
As of now, the population of physically challenged people in Nigeria is not known, one can however roughly estimate that there are over one million hearing impaired people in Nigeria. This rough estimate is based on the fact that every school for the deaf in the country can boast of hundreds if not thousands of children enrolled. Hundreds of others are attending higher institutions, and at the same time, a large number of them are roaming the streets in search of illusory jobs and added to that are the illiterate ones in their thousands in the cities, towns and villages.