How Much are Deaf People Costing Our Society?

[DaShi]

I ordered a pizza this weekend and asked them to call me when they arrived so that they wouldn't be knocking furiously on the door while I'm on the toilet like last time. So about 20 minutes later my phone rings and its some lady asking me about services for the deaf and if I've ever used them before. Once I realized she wasn't trying to sell me something, I stopped being a jerk and listened to the message. The pizza was a few minutes away. I say thanks and wait. He arrives and mouths, "I'm deaf" and I nearly mouth, "no ****" before paying for my pizza and enjoying the silence that my regular day doesn't normally provide me.

Anyway, the point is that these services for the deaf can't be cheap and it's certainly not efficient. This may have been the most expensive pizza delivery I ever had. This isn't a high skills job where they may be a limited hiring pool or non-transferable skills. He could be baking, cleaning, or doing any of the task a normy could do without need of hearing. Did Pizza Palace really need to let the deaf guy deliver the pizza? Wouldn't he also be a liability while driving? What if telemarketers hired deaf people or Dell hired deaf Indians for its call centers?

[Krill]

What if telemarketers hired deaf people or Dell hired deaf Indians for its call centers?

We can swear at them and feel better and they won't care

[giblets]

Why haven't they cured deafness yet? I know they have "cochlear implants" but why doesn't that work for all of the deaf and possibly dumb? I'm too lazy to research this.

[Krill]

Why haven't they invented intelligence implants yet? There's a huge market out there just waiting to be tricked into buying one.

[regexcellent]

Why haven't they cured deafness yet? I know they have "cochlear implants" but why doesn't that work for all of the deaf and possibly dumb? I'm too lazy to research this.

They solve a particular common cause of deafness, something to do with lack of hairs in the inner ear or something. The deaf population is decreasing rapidly for other reasons, specifically fewer people getting sick with diseases that cause it. NTID, National Technical Institute of the Deaf, located on my college's campus, has had trouble in recent years getting qualified candidates because there aren't enough deaf people anymore. Lots of people there are lamenting the decline of deaf culture, which I think is completely retarded. We should be celebrating it.

Also Ben isn't actually ****ing deaf, I know people at the gun club who are more deaf than him just from shooting guns a lot and hunting.

[DinoDoc]

What if ... Dell hired deaf Indians for its call centers?

They don't?

[Sava]

Also Ben isn't actually ****ing deaf, I know people at the gun club who are more deaf than him just from shooting guns a lot and hunting.

Yes. He's a deaf faker.

He has partial hearing loss. But he's not full deaf. I know what he can hear.

[korn469]

Ben is at the very least tone deaf to facts, reason and common sense.

EDIT: I'm not trying to be mean spirited, I just couldn't resist. Ben I mean it in good fun.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yes. He's a deaf faker.

Alright ***wipe.

You've never even met me in person.

He has partial hearing loss. But he's not full deaf. I know what he can hear.

I have a profound congenital dengenerative sensorineural hearing loss.

Congenital -> It's inheritable. From what we understand it's a dominant gene meaning my kids would have a 50 percent chance of inheriting it as I have a dominant gene from my father and a recessive one from my mother. We're not sure where the mutation is, there's been some studies done today, but one of us would have to go in to do genetic testing to confirm where the mutation lies and we've not done that. Perhaps sometime in the future.

Profound, I have a primarily upper register high frequency specific loss. It means that while I can hear low pitches, I cannot hear anything about 1250 HZ. It's completely lost to me. This includes things like fire alarms. I can sit right in the middle of class 2 feet from a fire alarm and hear nothing. I have some residual hearing in the lower frequencies, which is what I rely upon on my day-to-day life. I have difficulties with telephones and any form of communication that is not either written or face to face. The profound classification looks at the total loss across all frequencies up to 3k HZ, and I easily qualify for more than a 50 percent loss in both ears.

Sensorineural - the impairment has to do with the hairs in the cochlea. They do not respond to sound properly, meaning that the sound never gets picked up properly.

Degenerative - it will get worse over time. I used to hear better than I do now - I had a substantial drop in my grade 8 year. It's been fairly stable since then, but I've not been tested in close to 10 years, so I am not sure how it has changed.

We are not sure why it dropped then and what can be done to prevent it from dropping in the future.

Now, ass munch, since you're a qualified audiologist, care to call me a deaf faker again?

[Ben Kenobi]

They solve a particular common cause of deafness, something to do with lack of hairs in the inner ear or something.

Yeah it replaces the cochlea. I would be a good candidate for it, but it's not something I can afford. There's also side - effects associated with it too. For one, the implants do sometimes go bad and when they do the person becomes totally deaf. They also have to have some hearing function in order for the implant to work.

The deaf population is decreasing rapidly for other reasons, specifically fewer people getting sick with diseases that cause it. NTID, National Technical Institute of the Deaf, located on my college's campus, has had trouble in recent years getting qualified candidates because there aren't enough deaf people anymore. Lots of people there are lamenting the decline of deaf culture, which I think is completely retarded. We should be celebrating it.

Yep, agree there. The reason they are having trouble getting people is because they aren't really offering something that most people want. The trend has been very much towards accommodations and mainstreaming since technology makes it easier for deaf people to participate more fully. I don't really think that the total number is decreasing, rather that the number of deaf folks willing to go to these institutions is decreasing.

Also Ben isn't actually ****ing deaf, I know people at the gun club who are more deaf than him just from shooting guns a lot and hunting.

And how exactly would you know that? Have you met me in person?

[Ben Kenobi]

Wouldn't he also be a liability while driving?

The post office has found just the opposite. Deaf people tend to do better on the road since most people don't navigate by sound when they drive. I know I was as surprised as you but this is the truth.

[DaShi]

Ben, I don't believe a thing you post. Also, you're an *******.

[Kidlicious]

Maybe the deaf will save the post office.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ben, I don't believe a thing you post. Also, you're an *******.

Feeling's most assuredly mutual.

[Tupac Shakur]

How Much are Deaf People Costing Our Society?

Threeve billion dollars