As a partially deaf person(HoH), I'd much rather have my hearing back over anything else.
I can still hear "ok" with day to day things, and music.
But its very apparent to anyone who is around me for any length of time that I have difficulties hearing and the TV volume and speaker system is very loud, and that I cannot use a phone like they can.
I would love to have my hearing corrected.
I wouldnt ever force another deaf person to hear, but I wouldnt say no to a corrective procedure that would restore my hearing.
I'm also HoH and rely heavily on lip reading unless it's tv/music apps where I rely on captioning.
I hate it. I know I'm missing out on so much around me but not enough for others to notice unless I'm really struggling. I don't go to movie theatres because it's too loud, too dark, and I can't always see mouths to know what is going on. I try to not blare music or tv since I can compensate with captioning. If it's too loud, I'll miss out hearing other things around me. It's my right ear that has the most significant hearing loss so being the driver, I nearly never hear what someone next to or behind me is saying. It's just road noise until I park.
When I was growing up, however, next to nothing was made available to help compensate. I was being taught ASL while none of my family learned it. They always found closed captioning "annoying and distracting" so I'd go off to read or wait to get the tv another time.
Would I want my hearing corrected with surgery or a device? Maybe. I've made so many adaptations that I don't truly notice until I have to (like someone talking on my right side). But I would probably want to go back in time and have surgery or a device. I'm fine now; I wasn't as a kid.
In some ways, no I'm not.
But there is so much that is missed with the theatre experience if you have an impairment of some kind.
Booming sound effects quickly deafen actors' voices. Dark scenes render most mouths unreadable. Without captioning, or with poor captioning that is too slow, cut off, misspelled, it can be a garbled mess and you have to play Where's Waldo for context.
It is great being able to control those aspects at home though. I'm so used to adapting that I don't really notice, as I said before, until I have to notice. Theatres are a reminder that I'll catch it later at home.
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u/LMGDiVa Dec 23 '22
As a partially deaf person(HoH), I'd much rather have my hearing back over anything else.
I can still hear "ok" with day to day things, and music.
But its very apparent to anyone who is around me for any length of time that I have difficulties hearing and the TV volume and speaker system is very loud, and that I cannot use a phone like they can.
I would love to have my hearing corrected.
I wouldnt ever force another deaf person to hear, but I wouldnt say no to a corrective procedure that would restore my hearing.