Deaf world news

Belleville toddler may be youngest with cochlear implants

"We used to wait until kids were 2 to 3 years old but we found ourselves behind the curve," Herzog said. "This puts them on the same basis as their peers. We feel the earlier we place the device the more likely they are to achieve goals and improve language skills and reading skills.

"There is controversy in the deaf community about the devices, which help promote normal speech. Some say they will be the death of sign language and disrupt the heritage of the deaf society.Herzog said he understands the concern but that studies show higher literacy for children with the device.

Liz Collins said they see nothing wrong with sign language but they are both hearing adults and there is no deafness anywhere in either of their families.
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But there is younger CI baby in the past AllDeaf. I feel so goosebump and emotional when I read one of members' comments > "I feel cry when I saw CI on their small head. My son tried to speak back of CI children but they can't hear him so he tried again to speak front of them but they do if they don't understand them, then they understand right way when my son use sign language & play with him. I feel cry when I watch my sons play together with CI children. As you see that they don't want to learn to speak or hear."


Deaf Org. Responds To Wright Death Penalty Issue

Efforts to get the death penalty thrown out in the murder trial of Daphne Wright have led to a backlash within the KELOLAND deaf community.

Wright is scheduled to go on trial in March for murder and kidnapping in connection with the death of Darlene VanderGiesen. Wright's lawyers say the death penalty in this case would be "excessive" and unconstitutional because of her deafness. But others who cannot hear say those legal claims only add to the stigma of living in a silent world.
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Teaching Bhagavad Gita, through sign language

He is perhaps the only one in the world to teach the Bhagavad Gita through sign language.

Not that it was a matter of choice for him. Anantadev Das had lost the capacity to hear when he was just a year old.

Going to deaf school first in Mumbai as a nine-year-old, Das, founder of Bangalore-based Sanatana Dharma, an organisation involved in cultural, educational, social and spiritual activities for the deaf, says that he found the answers he was seeking in the Bhagavad Gita, the divine discourse spoken by the Supreme Lord Krishna Himself and the most popular of all the sacred scriptures from ancient India.

It was in school that he first met deaf children wearing hearing aids. He studied the English language, learnt grammar and passed SSC. While some of his friends went to America, he had to stay back, more as an obedient son to his mother than as an option.

In an interview to this website's newspaper, with the help of an interpreter, Das disclosed that before his graduation in History and Philosophy from a university in Mumbai, he was searching for answers to questions like why he became deaf, why people kept fighting each other, hated each other and kept secrets to themselves.

Das then plunged into research, met people belonging to different communities, Hindus, Muslims and Christians alike, and finally after reading the Gita, realised that “the body and not the soul was deaf.”

Happiness dawned on him only thereafter.As a special leader and social worker for the deaf, Das who was in Coimbatore for the three-day India Deaf Expo last week, had visited the US and given a lecture for deaf children in a university there.

Currently teaching the deaf the meaning of life through sign language in Bangalore, Das said he wanted people with normal hearing capability to involve themselves more in helping the deaf.

Das has also plans to buy some land and construct a temple for Krishna, possibly in Karnataka.
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Charity offers sign language lifeline for Deaf children

FAMILIES with deaf children say the Government does nothing to help fund vital sign language classes.
But now a lifeline is being thrown to them by a charity body which has found the cash to lay on free courses in the Reading area.

And Kim Hodges, for the Community Council for Berkshire (CCB), said: "After becoming involved with this project, I have been amazed and appalled at the way parents of deaf children are left to fend for themselves."
The CCB has linked up with Reading Deaf Centre and Reading Deaf Children's Society to offer the only free course available to adults in this area.

The 10-week introductory training programme is aimed at parents and relatives of hearing-impaired children who otherwise have to pay for a college course.
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'I hoped our baby would be deaf'

Most parents would be distressed to learn that their child had been born unable to hear. But for Paula Garfield and Tomato Lichy, it means daughter Molly can share their special culture. Rebecca Atkinson reports

When a pregnant mother is asked if she would prefer a boy or a girl the response is pretty formulaic - "I don't mind as long as it's healthy." Which, put another way, means: "I don't mind as long as it's not impaired in any way." But what if the expectant mother or father actually preferred it if the baby wasn't "healthy", in the sense that we understand the word, but instead was profoundly deaf?

This is how Paula Garfield, artistic director of the London-based theatre company Deafinitely Theatre, felt when she was expecting her baby daughter, Molly. "When I was pregnant I did hope the baby would be deaf. Obviously, I would have loved a hearing baby equally, but inside, I really hoped she would be deaf like me."

For Garfield and her partner Tomato Lichy, an artist and writer, the diagnosis that Molly was profoundly deaf was a cause for joy rather than sadness. "When the doctor told us she was deaf I really wanted to smile, but I felt I shouldn't because the medical staff obviously thought deafness was a problem. Once we got home we celebrated though."

So, why? The answer, Lichy argues, lies in language. "Being deaf is not about being disabled, or medically incomplete - it's about being part of a linguistic minority. We're proud, not of the medical aspect of deafness, but of the language we use and the community we live in. We're delighted that that is something our daughter can share as she grows up." more

Ugandan Deaf people have been protesting they want their news with interpreters:

THE Uganda National Association for the Deaf (UNAD) has protested the failure by the Uganda Broadcasting corporation-TV to provide for a sign language interpreter during its news bulletins.UNAD director Alex Ndeezi yesterday said since its inception, UBC-TV had denied the deaf important information in news that used to be provided by the defunct Uganda Television (UTV).Ndeezi said the absence of sign interpreters at UBC-TV and other public places such as courts, hospitals and schools was a gross violation of their human rights.
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