A spark of hope

I recently came across a tweet that I just couldn't shift from my nagging brain.  It spoke of a world where deaf people were included, respected and had opportunities to contribute to society, a dream or a hope you might call it, which ever it is something has been nagging at me, not quite fear but a worry if you like about what will happen when this person realises there is no hope.  

Expereince tells me that even today in a world where deaf advocacy is on the rise that being included is something that will never happen.  In my almost 40 years of being deaf I've NEVER once been included.  Everywhere I turn I find people complaining it takes too much effort to communicate, that it spoils it for them if extra things like subtitles have to be used.  I can write a list of ways in which society things it's too much effort and not fair on them to include a deaf person:

1. Subtitles and captions...you tube: it's unfair on the you tuber to have to give up their time to add them themself and too expensive to get someone else do it, regardless of the free programmes available.  TV: It's not a legal requirement so not all channels have them and those that do are invairable inacurate including news broadcasting and live announcements from the countries leader...Deaf lives don't matter is the message this gives.   Cinema: some films are subtitled but it upsets hearing audiences as they distract from the film so it's best not to do more than one showing a week and preferable not new release films.  
2. Shops: Deaf awareness isn't part of disability awareness as far as I am concerned.  My SINGLE yes you read that my ONLY positive experience came from a store assistant in sainsbury but for goodness sake don't shop in a busy store or they won't have time for you to hold up the checkout when you don't hear your total and can and will have you removed for taking to long....minus your shopping.  That's during regular life, now thanks to a pandemic it's even worse.
3. Theatres: Very few have stage text and the audience has a habbit of chatting about what they did all week which I find disrespectful to the actors on stage as well as annoying because any hearing I had is now gone.
4. Local events:  Village fates, County Shows, none of which as far as I can tell have any allowances for the deaf, even when you participate and tell them you just get swept up in a crowd of noise and confusion making you feel scared and vulnerable
5. Education: Whilst it's supposed to be mandatory to have an inclusive education system the reality is very few have the knowledge or the inclination to make the effort to support you to learn.
6. Sport: It's impossible to communicate when in team sports or for that matter with the person next to you at a gym or the worse case in a full class for yoga or zumba because of the acoustics and because of the fact the teachers rarely sign or have any deaf awareness at all!

I'm going to stop there because for the list of experiences that show society is too selfish to include someone with hearing loss is a long one for me personally.  I do try, though, to look beyond the egocentrism and try and find a reason for it, perhaps they themselves have been treated badly and know no different but in this case it's yet another negative, I have a suspicion that the reason most of society is selfish when it comes to the inclusion of a deaf person or a community of deaf people is because ultimately they are ashamed of us.  I know that I have many atributes that are embarrassing to others:

• I am loud, I can't hear my own voice so have no idea what so ever if I'm shouting or whispering which can be inappropriate
• I'm always behind on the conversation so it becomes boring and repetative for others
• I'm blunt because I cannot determine tone or understand when someone is trying to politely say something negative.
• I stick to definitions found in the dictionary and find it impossible to understand slang or "trendy" words and sentences.  A great example is the "like" trend.  When like you know like they said this.  I'm thinking like what? Like is a similie and means similar to something else.
• The use of extra words, extra words are a lipreaders nightmare because you don't pick up every word anyway and extra words that distract from the key words you need to fill in the blanks mean there is no sentence for example.  ____ like___ ____ __ like___ know____ ____ ___ said.  The two likes have replaced the words that may have told me what someone is saying.  Frustration can make me rude as clearly if they cannot use plain English they don't really want me to know what is being said so just be honest and say I don't want you to know.
• It's difficult to follow trendy things because by the time you work it out things have moved on
• I find it impossible to enjoy music, films, tv, you tube all the ususal things most people can do with ease.  I was four the last time I could decipher music and at that time I mostly exposed to hymns...another source of embarrasment for most people.

Again my list is going to be long so I'll stop there.  I want to return to the original thought about there being hope that one day all these things will be acceptable in society, that one day humans will deem us worthy enough, good enoguh and embrace us as part of society and make the effort to include us.  At the moment that flicker of hope has gone out for me and I can remember clearly how that felt, it was heart braking, soul destroying and depressing.  Yes actually depressing, I'm starting to see why deaf people are twice as likely to suffer from mental health issues as far as society is concerned it's okay to treat us badly.  

The flicker of hope I have left is that there is still time for me to be proven wrong and the person on twitter to be proven right.  I really want this to happen because if it doesn't I can see that the world is going to become a far nastier and even more isolating for Deaf people as they hide away beacause they start to feel ashamed of themselves because of the way others treat them.