Talk:Hearing loss/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Holy POV, Batman!

In children, hearing loss can lead to social isolation for several reasons. First, the child experiences delayed social development that is in large part tied to delayed language acquisition. It is also directly tied to their inability to pick up auditory social cues. This can result in a deaf person becoming generally irritable. A child who uses sign language, or identifies with the deaf sub-culture does not generally experience this isolation, particularly if he/she attends a school for the deaf, but may conversely experience isolation from his parents if they do not know sign language. A child who is exclusively or predominantly oral (using speech for communication) can experience social isolation from his or her hearing peers, particularly if no one takes the time to explicitly teach her social skills that other children acquire independently by virtue of having normal hearing. Finally, a child who has a severe impairment and uses some sign language may be rejected by his or her deaf peers, because of an understandable hesitation in abandoning the use of existent verbal and speech-reading skills. Some in the deaf community can view this as a rejection of their own culture and its mores, and therefore will reject the individual preemptively.

Regarding the first bolded section, I'm a bit confused... if it's pre-lingual hearing loss, why would the child have "delayed language acquisition"? Signed language users go through the same stages of Language acquisition that oral language users go through. If it's truly post-lingual hearing loss, I could see how there would be a delay in acquisition of a signed language. But pre-lingual hearing loss? I don't see a difference.

As for the second paragraph, I see some NPOV issues with the word "understandable". And again, since this is a pre-lingual person we're talking about, there are no "existent verbal and speech-reading skills." This paragraph seems to either have been written by someone with a strong Oralist bent, or someone who got confused about the "pre-lingual" part.134.71.140.147 (talk) 23:47, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

This page on PBS.org has a bit of info about language development and deafness (see the last section at the bottom of the page). It doesn't address issues of social development, though. I'll bet there's a ton of academic research on this topic if someone has the energy to look for it. Augurar (talk) 01:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Deafness article

Please join in the discussion at this location. Photouploaded (talk) 16:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for assistance merging content

The first half of the Deafness article was essentially a poor version of the hearing impairment article. There was a great deal of duplication between the two. In an attempt to fix this problem, I have moved this first half of the Deafness article to the hearing impairment namespace, under Talk:Hearing impairment/Deafness. Please compare this content with that of hearing impairment. I would appreciate feedback concerning how best to merge in this content. Photouploaded (talk) 16:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

In the case of orphaned duplicated content like that, just replace it by a summary and a main-article link. Dicklyon (talk) 18:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

There isn't any article to link to. The Deafness article is gone. Photouploaded (talk) 14:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the old article? I spent a lot of time working on it, and my entries seem to not have been transferred to hearing impairment article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.172.28.73 (talk) 15:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What's the name of the condition where your ears spontaneously feel as though they have been "plugged" and you cannot do anything but wait until it wears off by itself? (Dominant when entering high altitudes by airplanes or in tunnels by car) 13:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)White Mage Cid Hi how are you people!!!!11 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.176.136.240 (talk) 21:09, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This Article is pretty Audist

Not trying to be negative here. But I don't know anyone with any level of Hearing loss who considers themselves H.I. Even Doctors are generally sensitive enough to use "Hard of Hearing". The phrase itself is negative. Couldn't it just say deaf? Also, the section on Social Impact is very Biased. It explains that Deafness=Isolation. That can be true, but only if the family is unwilling to adapt to their child's needs. It doesn't HAVE to be that way. Isolation isn't the result of Deafness, but rather the result of families unwilling to see another way to live. I'm not an expert. Just some observations. Suggestion: Maybe could do away with the 1st 4 sentences of the Social Impact section. Also this Section: " Finally, a child who has a severe impairment and uses some sign language may be rejected by his or her deaf peers, because of an understandable hesitation in abandoning the use of existent verbal and speech-reading skills. Some in the deaf community can view this as a rejection of their own culture and its mores, and therefore will reject the individual preemptively. Seems odd. Culturally Deaf people reject someone for Signing? Is there a reference for this ever happening? 72.11.90.168 (talk) 22:52, 19 July 2008 (UTC)ST

I agree that Deafness should not be referred to as "hearing impairment." This is a negative term, and many Deaf people dislike the use of this term. This article could be improved by using the term "Deaf" instead of H.I. ASLchica13 (talk) 14:39, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, This Hearing impairment should be removed. Intead of it, put Deaf on topic.

Please don't redirect "DEAF" to hearing impairment. The word, "Deaf" has different meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.233.105.180 (talk) 06:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

It probably would be useful to take previous extensive discussion of th the name/redirection issue into consideration: Talk:Deaf/Archive_1, Talk:Hearing_impairment/Archive_2, Talk:Deaf, Talk:Deaf/Talk:Deafness --Kvng (talk) 14:11, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Problem, there's no consensus that can be drawn from these talk page links, I read these comments; the consensus was that there should be a merger, which makes sense as "hearing impairment" is a word for deafness. These are two very different things and they're not terribly subtle; the term hearing impairment has connotations that are generally avoided even by the medical profession, which is rarely at the forefront of activism as a group, so why should this term be used when deafness is the more frequently accepted medical term - notwithstanding the idea that different degrees of deafness as sliced up by social categories of people, not by any scientific measure. Snapdragonfly (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I see extensive discussion of the merger, but not of the naming. Does anyone actually support the current name for any reason other than avoiding the hassle of change? I see only the opposite so far. Dfeuer (talk) 13:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Temporary hearing loss

So some experts recently on NPR described a long-known mechanism by which hearing is temporarily reduced in sensitivity to prevent damage in the presence of loud sounds.New Research Towards Hearing Loss Pill This mechanism should be described in the article, along with a description of what damage can occur in these situations. Apparently recent research is focused on the genetics of this mechanism, with the potential for a treatment which would mimic the effects. -- Beland (talk) 08:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you're referring to Threshold shift it is mentioned in the Olivocochlear article --Kvng (talk) 13:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

"Deafness" was moved to "Hearing impairment"

The original article "Deafness" was moved to the present article "Hearing impairment" on 18 Jan 2008. What is the point of changing all the occurrences of "Hearing impairment" or "hearing impaired" in the article back to "deafness" or "deaf". The move was agreed to after an extensive vote on this issue in the discussion page. Do the people are trying to reintroduce the original terms never bother to go back to the history of an article when they edit? Dieter Simon (talk) 01:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it wasn't a move; Deafness merged, partly into Hearing impairment and partly into Deaf culture. I think this was a sensible resolution. Dicklyon (talk) 07:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

As I noted elsewhere on this page, I do not see any justification in discussion for the current choice of title, and it seems rather odd to choose a title many deaf find offensive. 71.178.171.15 (talk) 07:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Deaf people find it offensive that an encyclopedia has an article on hearing impairment? How odd. What about non-deaf people with hearing impairment? And what about the thousands of books that use this term? Are they offended by those, too? Isn't this really orthogonal to what you call deaf people, or to the whole Deaf culture thing? The reason you "do not see any justification in discussion for the current choice of title" is probably that the question has never come up since the article was started under the current title in 2002. Dicklyon (talk) 08:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the term "Hearing Impaired/Impairement" is seen as hearing-centric in the Deaf community, implying that the deaf individuals are hindered by their Deafness, where as they can do anything a hearing individual can. It's almost akin to the N-word. The N-word was originally another name for the color black, and still is accepted in some languages and parts of the world. It is, however, extremely offensive when used in reference towards Black individuals. Imagine if Wikipedia's article on Black's and African American culture was moved under the current article on the N-word. You'd get approximately the same effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.88.35.94 (talk) 15:40, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

My section above in this latest discussion was incorrect. Having had more time to look back at the history of this discussion I had better clarify the progress of what went on:

No, as you correctly stated the article "Hearing impairment" was never moved from "Deafness" or anything like it, but equally it was never true that the discussion about "deafness" never came up. At the beginning of 2005 there was an NPOV Dispute about disambiguation suggestions which certainly discussed the suggestion of whether to include a reference to deafness.

Then on 22 March 2005 a separate talk section was created named in this Talk page "Merging "Deaf" page with "Hearing impairment".

Then further actual articles were created: "Post-lingual hearing impairment" seemed to have been redirected/moved to Post-lingual deafness and "Hearing loss" to "Hearing impairment".

Furthermore there is an article Unilateral hearing loss and one Hearing loss with craniofacial syndromes.

So "hearing loss" in one way or another certainly has been discussed in the past, but I leave you to look back on these various talk:sections or separate articles to create your own impressions of the various suggestions that were made about deafness at one time or another and possibly why the article "Hearing impairment" was never moved to "Hearing loss". Dieter Simon (talk) 23:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Defining hearing loss/deafness

I've just altered the definition in the opening paragraph of the article. It previously read:

A hearing impairment or deafness is a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds.[1] Caused by a wide range of biological and environmental factors, loss of hearing can happen to any organism that perceives sound. The term Hearing impaired is often used to refer to those who are deaf, although it is viewed negatively by members of Deaf culture, who prefer the terms Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Sound waves vary in amplitude and frequency. Amplitude is the sound wave's peak pressure variation. Frequency is the number of cycles per second of a sinusoidal component of a sound wave. Loss of the ability to detect some frequencies, or to detect low-amplitude sounds that an organism naturally detects, is a hearing impairment.

These are the main problems I've addressed:

1. 'decrease in ability' - a person born totally deaf needn't have previously had more hearing for it to be an impairment (i.e., no 'decrease' in ability need occur). What is needed is a comparison relative to a species norm, so the inability to perceive sound that other people can is an impairment, but the inability to hear sound that is out of the frequency range of normal auditory perception is not an impairment.

2. 'understand sounds' may mislead readers into thinking that this is about communication rather than auditory processing generally.

3. 'sounds' should be 'sound'.

4. Detail about the terminology of amplitude and frequency seem out of place in the lede and the substance of this is covered by noting in the new definition that hearing impairments can be frequency-specific.

--Distinguisher (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Removed history section

I removed this section, which appears to be excerpted from a poor quality student essay on the subject. It contained numerous references to 'our country', which are out of place on an international website, touched on issues that have been more adequately covered in other sections of the article, and contained this gem of misinformation: one may be asking themselves how hearing impairments came about. It was believed that a group of people from oversees (sic) landed on Martha’s Vineyard in Connecticut during the 17th century, and started a deaf colony. So deaf people in 'our country' are all descendants of a particular group of settlers in Martha's Vineyard... I removed it.--Distinguisher (talk) 09:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Standard Threshold Shift

Can someone add info on "Standard Threshold Shift" to this article? Mention of it was just added to the disambig page STS ...

• Standard Threshold Shift, a change in hearing threshold relative to the baseline audiogram of an average of 10 dB or more at 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hz in either ear.

... and I'm looking for somewhere to link that to. This seems to be the most appropriate article, but the phrase isn't used here yet. The only article that phrase is currently used in, is Exposure action value. Thanks for any assistance or advice. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

I question the relevance of the second line in the first paragraph of this article. "Use of the term impaired implies that deafness presents an inherent disadvantage to an animal, a view that is rejected within the Deaf culture movement[citation needed], where the terms Deaf and hard of hearing are preferred.". It could be argued that the Deaf culture movement primarily deals with humans and not other animals. This also seems like an opinion without evidence to support the claim. Perhaps this could be moved to the Deaf Culture article or removed. What are people's thoughts? Russell Dent (talk) 14:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I made a small change to this section, which I think improves the situation. I do think it is important to mention the hostility that exists within the Deaf culture movement to the term impaired because there is a history of edit disputes about which terms should be used. Note that the current wording doesn't assert that impaired is inaccurate, but simply that they believe it to be so (see Deaf Culture for refs).--Distinguisher (talk) 19:31, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Your edit has made the line clearer, thank you. I wasn't questioning the accuracy of that line, I'm very aware of the views of the Deaf Culture movement and I'm thankful that you mentioned the history of edit disputes because I'm relatively new to Wikipedia. What I was implying was, that on it's own, without a reference, the line looked like an opinon. However I still wonder if it's relevant to have that line in this article considering this article is about Hearing Impairment. I note that the Deaf Culture article doesn't mention the word impairment once. I'd also like to mention that I'm deaf hence my interest in this article but I have no issues with the word impairment because it's almost universally accepted and I believe Wikipedia articles should aim for universal terminology.Russell Dent (talk) 03:22, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings on this particular issue. I have a deep appreciation of Deaf culture and its members' perspectives on words that are used in relation to deafness (such as "deaf-mute", a terribly outdated term that is still used too often). But from a standpoint of a quality article, if this were any other topic I'd be insisting that the comments do not belong in the lead, and that it especially should not be there if it is not discussed elsewhere in the article. Wherever it goes in the article, the statement about the feelings of Deaf culture needs a source. I think the ideal way to handle this would be to have a sourced discussion of terminology in Deaf culture, and a brief mention somewhere in this article, with a link to the section in the Deaf culture article. If I had more time, I'd tackle that myself. Cresix (talk) 03:36, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I just revived and cleaned up a previously deleted section on terminology in the Deaf culture article if you would like to add to that.--Distinguisher (talk) 08:55, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Myths

"7.All deaf/hard of hearing people want to be “cured” and able to hear" Unless there's a citation I don't think this is appropriate to put as it's fact for 99% of the people with hearing impairment. It's like saying "All people with Cancer want to be “cured” and able to be cancerfree". Pretty sure it's not really a myth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yialanliu (talk • contribs) 20:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Unreliable sources?

I've added a few tags to the "Myths" section for some sketchy claims; first, that only "30% of spoken English is visible on the lips" (as a linguistics student, I can tell you that certain elements such as voicing, intonation, stress, etc. are indeed indistinguishable, but I doubt that can be quantifiable) and that 90% of deaf children have hearing parent. The sources for these myths (as well as most of the others) is a quiz from the "Communications Services for the Deaf of Minnesota," with no data (i.e. census information, for the latter) to back it up. If none can be found, I suggest the "myths" be deleted.
Additionally, much of this list is just copypasta of the aforementioned quiz mixed with a tutorworkshop.org page (again, of questionable reliability.)
Links to the above articles:
http://www.mcbw.org/files/u1/deafculture.pdf
http://www.tutorworkshop.org/deaf/deaf4.htm

'Sufferer'

Oh boy....When I go visit 'Deaf' page, and read 'sufferer' in the first sentence, you're actually insulting the handicapped community in general, who usually in fact are proud of the fact that they overcome their disability or better, grew into the disability such that it is 'natural'.

Problem is this.... 'Deaf' got merged into 'hearing impaired.' In fact, 'Deaf' is the new term which is not related to Deafness nor Hearing-impairness (nor Deaf Culture) (of which Wikipedia redirected me to.)

Since I most definitely do not equate 'Deaf' with a Sufferer? Come on, there is a better term than 'sufferer'. The problem is, the article merger did a 'smash-up' when there should be 3 different pages. I should not have to site site anything to refute this, as this is common sense is for an article not to adopt a cripple POV (not to mention insulting.) Egberts (talk) 02:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I removed the word. Cresix (talk) 02:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, also of the 3 models (culture, medical and social); the 'Deaf' page should be restored and used for social, the 'Deaf culture' stands, and the 'hearing-impaired' is strictly about medical. those are the general conventions we've been heading over the last few decades. But the #REDIRECT Hearing impairment on 'Deaf' page is still deprecating a social into a medical condition, which is no good... maybe that's another thread?Egberts (talk) 02:57, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Sneezing Causes Hearing Loss?

"People with allergies have a higher chance of increased hearing loss. Hearing loss can be caused by the sudden change in air pressure behind the eardrum in the Eustachian Tube during a sneeze. Though the amount of hearing loss seems negligible, roughly .0001% loss per sneeze dependent upon the strength and frequency of the sneeze(s), their effects are cumulative. Allergy sufferers typically have on average 1-3% more hearing loss than those without allergies, due to their above average number of sneezes."

It's a hard to believe claim, the numbers are a bit funky, and there's no citation. It was added by an unregistered member by the name of "Curchey-d" on July 7th, 2009. He has only two contributions to wikimedia. I cannot find any journal article that corroborates the information. Not that I can find any reason not to believe it — it makes some sense — but unless somebody can provide a citation I think it should be removed from the article for the purposes of intellectual honesty and accuracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.139.176.84 (talk) 23:31, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The purpose of this article

This article seems to be suffering from constant erosion. There was a time when it was reasonably well written, but it needs some attention to get it back in shape. As for its purpose, I think it's worth stressing that this article is likely to be consulted by people who are wanting to learn about technical explanations of what deafness is, how it's quantified, what causes it and how it's treated or accommodated. While I appreciate that there are also interesting things to say about the culture that has grown up around deafness in humans, the article for that is Deaf Culture.--Distinguisher (talk) 07:51, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Closed as move. The WP:COMMONNAME arguments are persuasive. With regards to deafness and hearing impairment being different - well that has already been found against with the merger of the two articles. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Hearing impairment → Deafness – It appears from the above discussions that, although there was consensus for a merge between Deafness and Hearing impairment, there was no consensus on which article should be the destination of such a merge. I contend that the current title is derogatory and does not follow professional literature on the subject (as noted by other users). I also note that "hearing impairment" is not the common name for this subject. The relevant ghits (in millions) are listed below.

Google in general:

• Deaf (75.6) vs Hearing impaired (17.9)
• Deafness (10.5) vs Hearing impairment (1.64)

Google books:

• Deaf (12.1) vs Hearing impaired (1.25)
• Deafness (3.01) vs Hearing impairment (0.79)

For the sake of openness, I will disclose that I am partially deaf and, thus, possibly biased on this topic. Nonetheless, I don't believe that should hinder the productive development of this discussion on its own merits.

ClaretAsh 00:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment but you can have hearing impairment without being so far reduced in hearing as to be considered partially deaf, can you not? 70.24.247.54 (talk) 06:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I think the terms for clarifying degrees of deafness/impairment are similarly subjective. ClaretAsh 08:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Based on the relative frequency of the terms alone, I agree that 'Deafness' is a better title. However, I would warn against using the question of the title as a proxy for the debate about whether deafness is an impairment or not. The term hearing impairment certainly is offensive to some people, but so is saying that humans evolved from apes. That a statement causes offence isn't necessarily relevant.

Secondly, changing the title may lead to tensions over which meaning of deafness the article should be about. At the moment, this article is about the physical condition of lacking sensitivity to sound, which applies as much to other animals as to humans. The article covering Deafness in the cultural sense is entitled Deaf Culture. These articles are about very different things and are both needed, but Deaf culture proponents are often hostile to the medical sense of the term and often attempt to redefine it for everyone else as if being deaf gives them the authority to instruct everyone else about what the word means.--Distinguisher (talk) 10:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. The question of whether deafness is or isn't an impairment is quite rightly placed in the Deaf Culture article. This article is about deafness, full stop. If it were to be about deafness in humans, then it should be called Deafness in humans or some such.

I accept your point about the relevance of a term's offensiveness and have struck my words above. I still consider the term insulting but I agree that that should not affect this discussion.

As for the meaning of the term, deafness, I think the Encyclopædia Britannica sets a good example: "Deafness [is the] partial or total inability to hear." Simple, clear, free from jargon and cultural politics. A standard for us all to aspire to. ClaretAsh 10:33, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

We mostly agree then, but the Britannica definition is problematic because deafness is not merely an inability to hear sounds, but an unexpected inability to hear them. A person who is unable to hear sounds at a frequency of 100 kHz isn't considered deaf or hearing-impaired because no humans can hear sounds at those frequencies, while someone who is unable to hear above 5 kHz would be. Likewise, inanimate objects like pencils aren't deaf even if they are unable to hear. An adequate definition of deafness needs to include mention of the absence of an ability that is expected to be there if it is to match how the word is used among native speakers of English.--Distinguisher (talk) 16:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support; either title is appropriate (confusion between "deafness" [inability to hear] and "Deafness" [membership in Deaf culture] can be resolved with a hatnote), so we should choose the one that avoids causing offense to broad swaths of the deaf population. (That said, I'm aware of a few deaf individuals who reject Deaf culture and feel more comfortable being called hard-of-hearing or hearing-impaired, but unfortunately we can't please everyone.) Powers ^T 15:21, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose – reviewing the history, it appears to have been stable and without complaint for more than 2 years since the split/merge. It seems to me that deafness is a subset of hearing impairment. Who is objecting to the current title? The idea that it is somehow objectionable to some seems to be hypothetical. Dicklyon (talk) 01:33, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
  • In deaf communities, "hearing impaired" is usually considered politically-correct at best, offensive at worst (as it implies a deficiency that many deaf people don't recognize, preferring to see deafness as an asset). It is a term created by and used by hearing people, and it perceived as having been imposed on deaf people. Powers ^T 02:08, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
    • The fact is that deaf people do not have an ability that non-deaf people have, so either this lack of ability is an impairment, or the people who are not deaf have a superpower/supersense. If we look at the situation statistically, then people with extra abilities are those who have abilities that the vast majority of the population do not, while people who lack abilities are those who do not have abilities that the vast majority of the population have. 65.92.182.149 (talk) 07:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I am sensitive to the pov of the deaf community, but I don't see that it's a particularly relevant consideration for article naming in wikipedia, which is not really a part of that community, nor writing for it in particular. And I still haven't heard who is objecting to the present title. I'll be the first to admit that WP:TITLE is an imperfect mess, but I don't see anything there that would suggest we change this title. Dicklyon (talk) 07:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Erm, I'm objecting to the title. That's why I stated my case above and proposed a rename, hence this discussion. Just to clarify, though, what exactly is your oppose rationale? Is it your contention that article stability negates qualitative judgements of the article? If that's the case, then I can point to several articles I've prodded on the grounds of advertising or blatant non-notability, that had been "stable" for several years. The only other possible argument I can see is the hypothetical nature of a term's objectionability. But, as I've already struck that from my initial proposal, it shouldn't be necessary to refute it here.

As for the POV of the deaf community, that's neither here nor there, and should play no part in this discussion. As I've stated above, this article is about deafness. Not deaf culture (whatever that is), not the deaf community, not deafness in humans. Just deafness. An unexpected inability to hear sound. Regardless of species. The basis of this rename proposal is solely on the grounds of "deafness" being the common term. So, let's nip any arguments of POV in the bud now, before this discussion get's further derailed. I would even suggest to whomever ends up closing this discussion that arguments based on the offensiveness of this or that term should be discounted. As much as I'd like to see this article renamed, I'd prefer it be renamed on encyclopedic principles. ClaretAsh 08:36, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

ClaretAsh, I think you are quite right and that your insight and clarity of thought are to be applauded. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support: Deafness is more natural and a more likely search term. — Bility (talk) 18:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Deafness is a degree or type of hearing impairment, in the same sense that blindness is a degree or type of visual impairment. We are not talking about the social perceptions of a "label" or "stereotype", but the concept of being fully or partially unable to hear. --UnQuébécois (talk) 17:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

There does not seem to be consensus one way or the other. The ICD uses "hearing loss". Thus we should to. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your talk page please reply on mine) 00:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism?

There was a case of extensive removal of content on in December last year - [1]. I don't see any clear explanation for this removal. Is this a case of vandalism? Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I would guess the edits were well intentioned, but they do seem to be inappropriate. Unfortunately, the article has changed significantly in the interim. Powers ^T 16:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, it doesn't seem appropriate to simply revert to how it was before that edit. Still, if there's no objection to it, I will at least reinsert those entire sections that were deleted. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't object. Especially since there was a large volume of removal from the "causes" section--it used to be a lot more comprehensive. I just came here looking for something I knew to be in that section, and the particular subsection (Genetic) I was looking for is completely absent. - Purplewowies (talk) 05:38, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Please undo these deletions. Deleting complete, even properly sourced, sections of an article without explanation, let alone discussion, is never appropriate and should be treated as vandalism, however good the intention – we can't guess at what people refuse to tell us. Why exactly should presbycusis or other causes of hearing loss not be treated here?

Additionally, I would be thankful if someone more knowledgeable could go over this edit, which seemed in good faith, but reversed the message of the text, and as such needs a source (and in addition, should be phrased less informally) – I felt it was better to undo it for now. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I just made a reinsertion of deleted text in that edit. There were some sections (pasted below) that I haven't included in the current version, however, as I think they need some discussion or editing before any resinsertion. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. A comparison of the current state with the state previous to the deletions reveals that all external links and categories (save one) are still missing. Shouldn't they be restored, too? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing those missing parts I've reinserted the categories, but I'll leave the external links to someone who's interested in such a list, because, to be honest, I'm not. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Sections requiring some discussion before reinsertion

Environmental situations

Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other [[Ear#Damage to the human ear|ear defects]]. Dangerous Decibels, a group that is attempting to help reduce deafness, states that anything over 85 [[decibels]], which is about the level of a busy city, will damage hearing.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/ |title=Dangerous Decibels |publisher=Dangerous Decibels |date= |accessdate=2012-01-10}}</ref> Listening to loud noises for long periods of time make the eardrum less sensitive, which in turn makes it difficult to pick up quiet sounds more difficult to hear. Going through a trauma, like a car accident, can cause hearing loss due to the noise of the incident or an injury to the ear. If the [[middle ear]] or [[inner ear]] is damaged during the accident then hearing will degenerate because the sound wave cannot make it to the brain to be interpreted into sound. Other environmental factors that can cause deafness are nasal allergies. Nasal allergies cause mucus to build up in the throat and the nose, which will block the [[eustachian tubes]] and make it difficult for sound waves to make it into the inner ear.

I think the current version already has a section on this topic that is more detailed, but if anyone has time, feel free to find parts in here that are not present in the article. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Treatments

The most common conductive hearing loss treatment is a type of surgical procedure that will remove a blockage in the outer ear. This is almost always effective and will treat conductive hearing loss however surgery is only possible if the cause of the hearing loss can be identified. If not, a hearing aid can be used to amplify sound to make it clearer and more defined. The newest treatment for ANSD and sensorineural hearing loss is a cochlear implant. The cochlear implant is surgically installed to connect to the auditory nerve. The implant has a membrane that vibrates when sound hits it and sends signals to the nerve which then transmits the stimulus to the brain. The cochlear implant has only one membrane compared to the human ear’s three membranes. This means that sound will not be as clear using the cochlear when juxtaposed to normal hearing, but sounds can still be identified and responses can be made. In prelingually deaf children, cochlear implants as a rule allow the acquisition of mother tongue if implanted early in life and no other medical condition impairs the outcome <ref>Kral A, O'Donoghue GM. Profound Deafness in Childhood. New England J Medicine 2010: 363; 1438-50 </ref>.

I think this section was added after the removal by other users to fill the void, but it still seems less detailed than the version in the article. Again, I welcome everyone to have a look to find anything that may be useful to insert in the article. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Should Music levels, including Rock Music be measured in dB(C) rather than dB(A?)

Music with high levels of amplification, especially "Rock Music" which often involves large levels of Bass Boost - including for percussive instruments, will read many orders of magnitude lower when measured in dB(A) than in dB(C), as dB(A) [intended to industrial noises] ignores much of the energy at high and low frequencies. This may lead to a false sense of security when making judgements of potential damage based on such measurements. I personally have seen 60 dB(A) register at levels in excess of 95 dB(C). The dB(C) level may be measured to fall lower with distance, but the dB(A) level paradoxically remains almost the same at the same measuring points. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.106.140.230 (talk) 05:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

How is this relevant? Sculleywr (talk) 01:51, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Because noise above a certain decibel level i.e. 80dB(A) with prolonged exposure causes hearing damage, i.e. "deafness". The music industry is now more aware than it used to be of the damaging effects of loud music to the ears, or rather they're getting more PC about it. -- Jodon | Talk 02:01, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Move to "hearing loss"

There are a number of reasons for this

1. This is the term used by the ICD 9 and 10 [2]
2. It is a broader term, while deafness is defined as "hearing impairment that is sufficiently severe that the individual is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing even with amplification" [3]
3. We are an encyclopedia and therefore should try to use terms in the correct manner.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your talk page please reply on mine) 01:57, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

do not move

Deafness is not only a medical condition, but a social situation, isolating its population from the general society to a much greater degree than, say, polio or cancer. There is an entire Deaf culture, or rather, many Deaf cultures in different countries and communities, which the reason for the proposed move ignores. --Thnidu (talk) 19:39, 24 August 2012 (UTC) (Ph.D. Linguistics, U.C.Berkeley; dissertation on American Sign Language; currently Research Administrator at [http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/ Linguistic Data Consortium, U. of Penn.)

objection to the objection

1. This article is about the medical condition. There is already an article on the social movement.
2. Hard of hearing and hearing loss refer to ALL degrees of hearing loss. There are many people who have minor amounts of HL, but aren't upfront about it or are a part of deaf culture. Nor would we consider them "deaf people". And they may not know ASL. Similarly, we don't see people with glasses being treated as blind.

Ticklewickleukulele (talk) 01:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

• My opinion is that it's irrational to name this article "deafness". Because of "deafness" is a narrower term that is included in "hearing impairment" or maybe in "hearing loss". --JeanneMish (talk) 17:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I also support the move to "Hearing loss". According to the Audiologists Awareness Campaign:

"In summary, deafness may be only a physical characteristic or it can signify both a physical condition with a social/cultural perspective. Hearing impairment can run the full gamut from mild loss to profound. The main characteristic that separates the hearing impaired person from the deaf person, is whether they relate primarily to the hearing world or to the deaf world." (http://www.audiologyawareness.com/hearinfo_impairdeaf.asp)

[The putative source of the above paragraph was in a <ref>...</ref> tag, which sent it to the bottom of the page looking like part of an unrelated section. I've put it in parens instead. --Thnidu (talk) 03:17, 11 August 2014 (UTC)]

The alternative is to have it split into 2 articles, each dealing with its corresponding aspect, however according to Ticklewickleukulele its already been done under Deaf culture. -- Jodon | Talk 18:09, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay will move based on support here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:11, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Sign language section

The second paragraph of the Sign language section was

• ignorant of the multiplicity of sign languages around the world, as if there were only ONE sign language and ONE deaf culture
• simplistic in its discussion of sign language structure, e.g., "Sign language consists of different hand signals to mean different words." I mean, really! How about "Japanese consists of different voice signals to mean different words" -- as if "sign language" and Japanese had no real words but only "signals", which were combined in the same order as words (English, of course) to express meaning.

I replaced the paragraph with material I edited from the Sign language article. --Thnidu (talk) 19:57, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

We are needing references for much of the content here. Especially the section on myths. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:30, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Old page history

I have moved some old page history that used to be at the title "Deafness" to Talk:Deafness/Old history. Graham87 03:08, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Charcot Marie Tooth 1E (CMT1E) causes deafness

This DEMYELINATING variant of CMT is also noted for causing deafness. http://omim.org/entry/118300 01:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

"Deaf" as a proper noun (In a social context, not a medical context)

While it doesn't seem to be an issue in this article, I'm asking here to get broader input; many deaf-related articles capitalize every use of the word "deaf" ("Deaf American", "Deaf Culture", "Deaf identity", "Deaf people", and often simply "Deaf"). Is this proper? Does it have any basis in external style-guides? Joefromrandb (talk) 21:44, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but I believe the jury is still out on that one. You're asking if the use of a "proper" noun is "proper"? I'm no linguist or philosopher, but that might depend on a definition of Proper. In any event, from what I understand, Deaf (with big 'D') refers to people, or a specific "community" that identifies itself as "Deaf", whereas "deaf" (with little 'd') merely refers to the condition, however some people refer to themselves as "deaf" because they are not closely aligned with a "Deaf" community.

• D-eaf is a person who identifies themselves as culturally deaf, who uses sign language.....and does not see deafness as a disability whatsoever.
• d-eaf is a person who has very little or no connection to the deaf culture and regards deafness as a disability.

In the deaf world, the difference between Deaf and deaf is Deaf Culture. People who say they are Deaf (with big 'D') are those who strongly follow Deaf Culture. People who say they are deaf (with little 'd') are those who don't follow Deaf Culture. That's probably your only "external style-guide".

I agree this should be clarified in the article, probably the lede section, linking to the Deaf Culture article, rather than having to scroll all the way down the article where the section still makes it somewhat ambiguous. -- Jodon | Talk 22:35, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the lesson! I agree that it should be clarified better. This is obviously a nuanced concept and I'm not knowledgeable enough to make style changes. It would be great if someone in the know could have a look at some of our articles on D/deaf-related topics and see that this is explained. Joefromrandb (talk) 00:43, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm not a terribly active Wikipedian right now so if no one else were to make such changes I would probably get round to it eventually. Unfortunately I would have to go through every deaf related article and review them one by one. This would be a daunting task especially given the fact that there are no established "style guides" as you suggest. You seem to have more experience in wiki-editing than myself so perhaps you might know the proper channels who would look after this. -- Jodon | Talk 15:13, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Serously? "d-eaf is a person who has very little or no connection to the deaf culture and regards deafness as a disability", talk about a arrogant, straw man, argument. user:Jodon1971 saying people can't comment or understand the rules of grammar just because they are not part of what you consider a group is the most agrivating thing I have seen. CombatWombat42 (talk) 15:24, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

The "argument" you quoted from my comment was taken from a discussion about this topic from alldeaf.com, in reply to the user above me. Those are not my words. I chose from a discussion what I considered the simplest explanation so that the user above me could understand the difference. Nowhere did I say people "can't comment". Nowhere did I say people "can't understand the rules of grammar just because they are not part of a group". Prove where I said that. Putting words in people's mouths and making half-assed accusations is the most aggravating (correct spelling) thing I have ever seen (not!). -- Jodon | Talk 21:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

We do not do this for any other condition. Thus we should not be doing so here. Maybe try a RfC to get wider Wikipedia input. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:37, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

No other condition has produced its own culture. The Deaf have their own language, poetry, society, etc. That's not true of the blind or lame or asthmatic. So it is an exception, and this is reflected in sources. However, over-capitalization of "deaf" can be an annoyance, and using capitalization as the sole conveyor of meaning can be a real source of confusion. I'd say capitalize, but only when you can clearly justify it, and never word things so meaning is lost if the capitalization is removed. — kwami (talk) 12:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm surprised people are still commenting on this as the rfc is closed and consensus is against capitalization. I could probably give a thousand sources that reflect the use of the word with a capital "D", but unfortunately that would probably offend or aggravate (see CombatWombat's comment above) the majority of the wiki-community who took part in this rfc and who opposed its use. Their sensibilities are reconciled with the fact that there is currently no style guide that would allow the use of capital D in this one particular case, no matter how much this is in conflict with the real world. -- Jodon | Talk 21:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

If it were regularly so capitalized in sources not associated with deaf culture (i.e., neutral), I would agree, and no doubt the consensus would too. But judging by the results of a Google News search of deaf culture, this is not the case. —Frungi (talk) 23:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Capitalization of the word deaf

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Oppose

• We do not do this with other disease/conditions and I do not see any good reason to do it here. We for example write "people with cystic fibrosis" not "people with Cystic fibrosis" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
• Opppose, see WP:MEDMOS, and we don't do this anywhere else. What next? Autistic. Tourettic. Blind. Intellecutally Disabled. And "protection from <alleged> discrimination" under a WikiProject? Not on. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

  Like the poster above you, you fail to recognize the uniqueness of the distinction between this "condition" and "culture". Capital D “Deaf” is used to indicate a cultural identity for people who have a substantial hearing loss but do not consider it a disability since they have adjusted to a community in which they can function without it existing as a disability. Lower case d “deaf” is used to refer to those whose level of hearing is considered by both the medical profession and themselves as a condition and a disability which does not allow them to live easily in a spoken-language-oriented society.

  You're advocating a stance where Wikipedia will be the only place where the Deaf Community is not given the distinction it already possesses. This article outlines the dichotomy that exists when choosing one over the other, i.e. capital "D" versus small "d", while this article clearly shows the Deaf Community is a recognized culture distinct in its own right. The failure to acknowledge a distinction is the same as discrimination. -- Jodon | Talk 17:58, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

  Yes we will be in the same company as the NIH [4] [5], the World Health Organization [6], the UK governement [7], the Mayo Clinic [8] and the Lancet [9] among others. If these organizations were using a capital D I would suggest that we do the same. But they are not. Wikipedia is not for advocacy. We follow the lead of reliable sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Ok. So why don't you go to the Deaf culture article and remove all capital "D"'s there also? Good luck with that. -- Jodon | Talk 14:21, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Wikipedia policy supports capitalizing proper names. [10]. This is clearly a proper name. Deaf culture gets 17.9 m Ghits. The NIH, WHO, the UK government, none of those groups are arbiters of what is and isn't a proper name. This is a social issue and apparently society accepts it as a proper name. At least according to Google it does. And we do use Google hits to establish notability on Wikipedia. Malke 2010 (talk) 16:02, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Thank you, Malke. The problem is that all of this is being questioned here again, when it has already been settled in the Deaf culture article. All I'm asking is that the relevant section here be restored out of respect for the efforts made on that article. Otherwise what is required is to open up a whole new RFC on that article also, again, if nothing is resolved here. DocJames, would you like to start that as well, please. -- Jodon | Talk 16:49, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Not sure why another RfC is suggested. This one is not finished yet. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:40, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  As a random aside, here, people who consider themselves part of an autistic culture do capitalize it sometimes, but the practice is not as universal or consistent as "big D" Deaf, and anyhow, Autistic culture is not as widely talked about in that vein here. Aside done. - Purplewowies (talk) 05:02, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose, though it might be interesting to discuss a more targeted guideline about when Deaf should be capitalized. The uses mentioned (Deaf culture, Deaf community) seem to be adjective uses; but certainly not all adjective uses would be capitalized either, and even these should be examined to see how widely this convention is used in practice. Dicklyon (talk) 16:13, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per Doc James. --LT910001 (talk) 10:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as formulated. “Deaf” is never a noun, and should never be used as a noun. When it’s used as an adjective referring to a community, then sure, capitalizing it as part of a proper name makes sense—except that “gay culture”, which seems to be a common lexical comparison, is not capitalized in our LGBT culture article. —Frungi (talk) 09:14, 16 November 2013 (UTC), edited 00:34, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  So why are you opposing? I support that also. That's the issue we're trying to resolve here. This RFC is discussing the support of the use of the word "Deaf" under any circumstances. Please read through all the comments again. -- Jodon | Talk 23:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  Not according to the RfC itself (which is what I’m opposing here, not the comments). Read the question under the RfC banner at the top of this section, then re-read my !vote, and hopefully my reasoning will be clear. But if not, I’ll elaborate: Phrasing is important in these things. This RfC is a little like asking, “Should Blue be capitalized when used as a number?”. It’s nonsensical because the word can and should never be used that way. If that RfC passed, what would you even do with it? And what couldn’t you do with it? Like “blue” is never a number, “deaf” is never a noun. —Frungi (talk) 00:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
  Oh, and in case this was the cause of confusion: “as formulated” means the way it’s worded. So my !vote means “I oppose this version of this proposal.” —Frungi (talk) 00:41, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  Then the OP of the RFC has made an inaccurate request. His reverted edits which came before the RFC are the result of denying that Deaf can be regarded even as a Proper noun (which is what you support, unless I'm mistaken, splitting hairs notwithstanding), not merely a noun, if you check his comments here. And this is not about the capitalization of everything and anything, as you're implying, but something very specific, with specific rules and regulations, with a cultural history behind it. It is not something that has just been brought up here now for the first time, by Wikipedians. It shouldn't be up to us to decide, it has already been decided, but someone here has decided to take exception to it in posting an RFC. The result of this RFC will not affect how the Deaf community is considered outside of Wikipedia, it already exists outside of any Wikipedians thinking their interpretation of policy masks an underlying resentment of how in this particular case capitalization is integral to the thing it is referring to. It is not up to us to conjecture what outcome this will have on other words being capitalized, on what other conditions should be capitalized, or what other communities should be capitalized. That just sidetracks the issue. Perhaps you think the phrasing of this article is incorrect? If not then your splitting of hairs has resulted in misplaced opposition. -- Jodon | Talk 01:25, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  I don’t support that “deaf” may ever be used as any kind of noun because that’s simply not the type of word it is (the noun form is “deafness”). I do agree that “deaf” may be used as part of a proper name—as can any word at all—but per my recent edit, we shouldn’t capitalize it as a cultural thing when we don’t capitalize other such cultural terms such as the oft-compared “gay culture”. If you would care to rewrite the RfC to better match what you say it’s proposing, I will be happy to respond to it directly rather than opposing the current proposal. —Frungi (talk) 02:59, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  Your suggestion should be directed towards Doc James, not me. I don't know what he wants, so how can I rewrite it? -- Jodon | Talk 19:08, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose The rules of grammar are not overriden by politics of a minor issue CombatWombat42 (talk) 15:27, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is an article about a medical condition, not about a self-conscious community. In articles that are specifically about the self-conscious community, I would have to think about it — we have to be careful to remain neutral as to the sociological/political claims of said community; we can't be seen as endorsing them, but with care taken to that point, maybe it might be acceptable. But that's not the question under discussion here; this is primarily a medical article, and I'm certain that the overwhelming usage in medical literature is with the lowercase d. --Trovatore (talk) 18:59, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  This is an article about deafness, which is not JUST a medical condition, its a socio-cultural issue. If you wish this article to refer exclusively to the medical condition then remove the section on the social and cultural aspect. Otherwise your comment is self-contradictory. If you can prove that this article is just about the medical condition then that would justify your removal of it, in which case the Deaf culture article could be linked to in the "see also" section. -- Jodon | Talk 23:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: The social and cultural section, however, can use the capital D, but in speaking about the medical condition, a small d should be used. In any event, this isn't really an issue that can be resolved on an article RfC. This seems to be something that needs to be addressed by the wider community regarding MOS policy. Malke 2010 (talk) 19:33, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as formulated. While there are many proper nouns that include the word 'Deaf', the word itself is never a noun. We should avoid making any overly-broad statements on when to capitalize it and look at the issue on a case-by-case basis. Yes, this means more tedious debates, but the end result will be better article content (which is what counts). Kaldari (talk) 23:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per SandyGeorgia. This should really be closed now that WT:MOS#RfC: Capitalization of adjectives for groups is in progress, as the present one would be WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. --Stfg (talk) 10:31, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
• Largely Oppose. While this is an interesting argument in the abstract, looking at how this rule actually applies in the prose quickly reveals how ambiguous and nonsensical this application actually is. In each and every case in which "Deaf" has been applied (by the IP whose edits instigated this debate anyway), there is a highly subjective judgement call being made that the deafness of the person is best defined as a cultural and adopted distinction, rather than a physical and innate one. Putting aside for a moment that this approach is non-standard, inconsistent with the usual rules of typographic principles in English (and in any event, very clearly in conflict with specific Wikipedia policy on the issue), it is simply likely to be very confusing to the reader. Now there is an argument to be made for preserving the capitalization in the context of direct quotes, the usage being grandfathered in, so to speak, by the author's own emphasis, but that is not the argument being made here. However, this draws some attention to a flaw in the section ("Deaf culture" which this discussion mostly applies to); aside from one single clause at the beginning of the section, it is entirely one run-on quote and thus is in serious need of re-writing. The section really should be more of a basic summary of the concept of Deaf Culture, and the quotations in question should be moved to Deaf Culture itself, not preserved here to give one man's insight into living within that culture, where it makes much less sense out of the framing context.

Returning to the core issue, however, I think this is a pretty cut and dry case. Clearly in the very narrow context of referencing the quasi-idiomatic use of "Deaf Culture", the capitol D is often appropriate, as it refers to an established phenomena which can be recognized by a proper noun. Mind you, even in that context, I find it overused -- it should be used, at most, when referring to the specific and overt cultural movement which some deaf persons actively and overtly endorse ("He feels very strongly about Deaf Culture and would never consider a cochlear implant.") but not for any and all social or cultural practices present amongst the deaf ("There is plenty of resistance to the notion that deafness is a disability in the culture of the deaf." Is my distinction clear there? I mean to say that not everything that has a cultural basis and overlaps with a specific community automatically qualifies as a proper noun and thus for capitalization. As a matter of fact, even our Deaf culture article sticks to this distinction, as all of the capitalization of "deaf" in that article is done in the case of proper nouns (formal groups, institutions, facilities and, yes, the overt cultural movement). No offense meant to the supporters of the capitol D in all uses of "deaf culture" or in all contexts of deaf people as cultural beings, but I think you are conflating several different grammatical and conceptual categories. Or at least trying to make that confused state of affairs the standard here, but I just don't think Wikipedia policy allows for it at all. Frankly, even the context of deaf culture as a movement, I'd avoid the capitalization outside of reference to a specific formal group. Snow (talk) 23:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: Sorry for any confusion—this was not the case in the Deaf culture article until I recently edited it to bring it in line with Wikipedia policy, mentioned both here and on that article’s talk page. Capitalizing the word as it was would be appropriate only if there was consensus for it or for capitalizing group identities in general, and there is not. And it was probably overused there in the way you discuss, too. —Frungi (talk) 02:23, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing that to my attention. It looks pretty consistent with policy in it's current form, regardless. And I don't think the understanding of the subject, the dignity of the deaf, or the positions of the pro-Deaf Culture are at all hurt by the absence of a glaring grammatical error, none of them. Snow (talk) 15:26, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment and mainly Opposition I agree with Snow Rise practically in detail. Firstly, if anyone has a religious commitment to capitalising "Deaf" much as others capitalise God or America, that might be understandable, but is not appropriate in WP, nor relevant to this RFC. For the rest, this is not a matter of proper respect. but proper, meaningful English (you should please excuse the term!) When we speak of the deaf as a description or diagnosis, it is not a proper noun and is no more appropriate to capitalise than Hairy or Blonde or Gangrene. If there is a community named and referred to as the Deaf, then we are perfectly happy to capitalise it just as we would capitalise the Hairy Harry Horror Show or the Blonde Bombshells Barbershop Quartette. But that does not entail our abandoning the normal spelling of hairy or blonde. Nor of deaf. No offence, no disrespect, just english. jon richfield. Errr, that is to say... JonRichfield (talk) 08:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Support

• This article is already protected from discrimination under Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf.
• I support the use of "Deaf" as Proper noun ONLY in the section that treats of "Society and culture" - i.e. with reference to Deaf culture, NOT the entire article, as presupposed by Doc James in his RFC above. There is no "Cystic fibrosis" culture, therefore there is no community that distinguishes between a disease and a culture. A distinction is made between deafness as a disease/condition and Deafness as a "culture", as I explained in my comments above. People who identify as deaf/Deaf fall into 2 categories, those who see it as a disability, and those who do not. The section that treats of Deaf culture in this article should reflect non-discrimination. This distinction should not be ignored, and "Deaf culture" should NOT be discriminated against by Wikipedia community members. If it is, I will take this to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf and see what they say. -- Jodon | Talk 13:38, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

  -"There is no "Cystic fibrosis" culture"

Isn't there though? Cystic fibrosis certainly influences the behaviour of those who have it and they communicate about it, seek out others with the condition and have a shared experience. One might even say that the only difference between the groups is that one has a more vocal advocacy than the other. This rather gets to the root of the issue: "deaf culture" is a broad term that could be used to refer to a lot of different things, aside from the one particular vein of sentiment it is often associated with -- specifically the notion of de-emphasizing the condition as a disability and defining it instead as variation. But in reality that's a movement (a willful and considered advocacy of specific idea), not a culture (the sum total of all the inter-social behaviours of a group of people), so in that narrow context, it does barely qualify as a proper noun, so long as it's being recognized as an established current of thought, not just general culture -- I just wish someone would coin a proper name for the movement (Deaf Pride?) rather than allowing the ambiguity between this branch of advocacy and a more general use of the term "deaf culture". Also noteworthy is that in that one narrow context that we can accept deaf culture as capitalized, it's actually "Deaf Culture" and not "Deaf culture", because the operate lexeme is the phrase as a whole, not "deaf" in itself.

-"The section that treats of Deaf culture in this article should reflect non-discrimination."

Nothing the least bit discriminatory has been proposed; let's not embrace histrionics here.

-"This distinction should not be ignored, and "Deaf culture" should NOT be discriminated against by Wikipedia community members."

In-so-far as I've seen in the entirety of this discussion, no one has shown the least bit of discrimination: this is a content/style discussion, meant to improve the way the article reads, not a personal argument. Frankly, aside from coming across as knee-jerk and unnecessarily combative, your presumption/insinuation of discrimination seems inconsistent with WP:AGF to me. None of the opinions forwarded above denigrate those who are deaf, minimize the ideals of a specific segment of the deaf population, or even really comment upon said opinions. This is simply a matter of the English language and Wikipedia policy. "A deaf man" is simply a noun phrase which does not posses a proper noun and therefore is not capitalized. How the man feels about being deaf does not in any way change the grammatical reality of the situation. And this is not entirely an arbitrary distinction here; this is a matter of descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) grammar, meaning that we can cause confusion and break from our encyclopedic tone by applying misconstrued grammar. Our purpose on this project is purely descriptive, not advocative and we use specific common standards when it comes to the grammatical outlay of our in-article statements. Authors and even academics may feel justified in skirting the general principles of English descriptive grammar in order to lend emphasis or legitimacy to an idea (and whenever we directly quote them we must maintain that usage), but that is simply not how we operate in formulating our own prose. I'm sure there's more sympathy amongst the editors here for the notion of dignity in deafness than you suppose (these people did voluntarily decide to edit on an article concerning deafness, after-all), but a good editor puts aside personal feelings to present the matter in the most factual and clear manner possible.

"If it is, I will take this to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf and see what they say."

Well that seems pretty close to canvassing to me, but then I've always said the more the merrier. Most of the active editors from that project are likely to see this discussion in any event, I daresay. But don't say you weren't warned if someone accuses you of trying to inappropriately influence the outcome of the discussion. Snow (talk) 10:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Your verbosity notwithstanding, your points are well taken (no doubt you will take apart this comment as well). Just in case you hadn't noticed, I have withdrawn from this discussion since 17 November, as I am now satisfied that current inconsistency issues have been properly addressed, at least for the time being. In deference to Frungi's extensive efforts, this has untangled the issue somewhat. I will run with Malke's observation that time will tell if Wikipedia policy will eventually change to reflect the expanding use of this differentiation in society. And lastly, I take exception to your final remarks. I was not canvassing, simply proposing a way to look for consensus. What you call canvassing I call trying to resolve a conflict using the appropriate channels. My experience here is that people who raise questions are often either ignored or beaten down by other members of the wiki-community. Editors with conflicts are directed to noticeboards all the time, so why shouldn't the relevant WikiProject be consulted on the subject? If this was an unwarranted action please tell me. You are, however, free to interpret things as you see fit, but your error in judgment on that point is no longer relevant as I believe the discussion is closed. In any event, I am satisfied that sufficient awareness now exists within WP through these discussions that will help to deal with future editing inconsistencies. -- Jodon | Talk 22:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support when referring to Deaf cultural things, as this is what is generally done when speaking about the culture. For example, (at least, I am fairly sure here) History of deaf education in the United States uses "Deaf" when referring to culture (and in proper names that include it, of course) but "deaf" when referring in general to deafness. (A note that I am not using this to support my point but rather to demonstrate what I believe should be done.) - Purplewowies (talk) 04:56, 16 November 2013 (UTC) Edited 05:14, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
• You should use Deaf (capitalized) to describe a member of that group in any context that you would use Black (capitalized) to describe a member of that group. This isn't a medical matter: it's a sociocultural one. They have defined themselves as a distinct sociocultural group, and their self-identification should be respected like you would respect the self-identity of members of a religion, culture, or race. MOS:IDENTITY isn't just for trans people.
  I realize that a lot of people don't know anything about this. Your favorite search engine will easily take you to sources like this and this that discuss it. The article really ought to have a short paragraph on this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

  "You should use Deaf (capitalized) to describe a member of that group in any context that you would use Black (capitalized) to describe a member of that group."

Yup. And take a look at our Black culture article; aside from the title and beginnings of sentences, "black culture" is capitalized exactly zero times in the entirety of that lengthy article.

"This isn't a medical matter: it's a sociocultural one."

Actually, it's neither. It's a linguistic and policy matter. The content itself is both medical and sociocultural, but the rules which govern how we describe the subject are the principles of English grammar and orthography and the policies of Wikipedia, which don't go on hiatus simply because culture is involved and the word in question is charged with a sense of personal involvement. The context, be it social or empirical, only matters if it influences whether the word is a proper noun or not, as that is the distinction our policy (and general English standard) is based on. And in all of the examples which were de-capitalized in the article, they were not proper nouns. Personally, I'm not across-the-board opposed to the notion of a capital being appropriate, but you can't just work on the principal of allowing it in any context where it just feels right, "because, you know, peoples thoughts, and feelings, and expressions and perceptions of cultural norms are involved". That's not consistent with policy or general English grammar and orthography, nor is it even remotely well-refined enough to be of practical use. Apply the standard that a person simply has to have enough self-identification with a word in order for it to be capitalized and you're begging for arguments without end between those making that argument and other (much more numerous, if less tenacious) editors looking to apply standard English grammar. There is a reason we use basically the exact same style guidelines used by all other previous English encyclopedias and virtually all published empirical/non-fiction writers of the modern era: we do it for efficiency, for consistency and, paramount above all, to have the best chance of presenting the subject with the most clarity for the average user. Emotional investment does not trump those considerations. When demonstrably a proper noun, capitalization must be allowed, by policy. And when it is not a proper noun, nor at the beginning of a sentence, nor a part of a title, then it must be lower-cased. No judgement of the validity or perspectives of the culture in question, just the application of a simple standard, applied universally to all nouns (including a vast collection of cultural terms far too expansive to ever hope to list) to ease communication and provide information and context to the reader - a standard taught to most all native English speakers in grade school, I might add, and fully adopted and endorsed by the Wikipedia community at large.

"They have defined themselves as a distinct sociocultural group, and their self-identification should be respected like you would respect the self-identity of members of a religion, culture, or race."

Opposition to capitalization above is really not at all based in de-legitmizing anyone's chosen self-descriptor. I think most of us can think of some context wherein the capital can be used -- it would be much easier if we had a common-use phrase like Deaf Pride or the Pro-Deaf movement, but we don't -- but you can't simply use the fact that culture is involved to justify it in any context; that is simply way too vague and subjective an approach to propose an exception to one of the most universally established descriptive rules in modern English.

"I realize that a lot of people don't know anything about this."

Personally, I'd be surprised if most people here aren't familiar with the subject. I'm only here on account of the RfC and I've been familiar with the deaf subcultures being referenced in this discussion for about as long as I can remember; I can't expect that the editors that haunt this particular article are very likely to be less so. Snow (talk) 11:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support when used in terms of Deaf culture, Deaf community, etc. I learned about this when I was a grad student at Johns Hopkins. The students at Gallaudet University are rather militant about it. A lot of them could have cochlear implants or the electronic-bone conduction implants, but they refuse them. They don't believe there is disease. They believe deafness is just a variation like blonde hair and blue eyes. They are 'born this way,' ergo Deaf culture, like Gay culture. There is a wikipedia article Deaf culture that explains about this. This has WP:notability. @Jodon: is correct. Whenever the socio aspects are being discussed, it's proper P.C. to capitalize Deaf as in Deaf community, Deaf culture. The WikiProject should have a guideline for this. The comparison "Cystic fibrosis culture" doesn't work because that's a pathology. Look how long it took the medical community to stop labeling homosexuality as a mental illness. Deafness isn't a pathology. Wikipedia should be on top of this. Malke 2010 (talk) 03:35, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Would you capitalize "Homosexual culture"? Most sites do not appear to do so. As I state above we should follow sources not lead sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:39, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  I would capitalize Gay culture because the Gay community prefers to say Gay. The Deaf culture prefers to say Deaf instead of "hearing impaired." The Black community in America prefers to say African-American. I would capitalize all those identities. Malke 2010 (talk) 15:00, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  "Whenever the socio aspects are being discussed, it's proper P.C. to capitalize Deaf as in Deaf community, Deaf culture."

  It's nice when political correctness and Wikipedia policy match up, but when they don't, PC sympathy has to give way to the clearest (and most linguistically consistent) way of presenting the information. Snow (talk) 11:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

  Excuse me, but when was this vote held exactly, and how were the electors qualified? Before making pronouncements about what a "community" prefers, don't you have to establish that there is such a community in the first place? There is a group of political activists who claim to speak for those who can't hear. Wikipedia does not endorse that claim, as that would be a violation of neutrality. --Trovatore (talk) 19:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  "They believe deafness is just a variation like blonde hair and blue eyes. They are 'born this way,' ergo Deaf culture, like Gay culture." Bit of a non-sequitur, there. Is there a Blonde culture, and do we write of Blue-eyed people? --Stfg (talk) 15:47, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Discuss

People in the Deaf Community (as opposed to people who are "deaf", see above) are perfectly functioning members of society. Society has marked this recognition by creating a distinction in the use of Deaf as a proper noun when referring to Deaf people in the Deaf Community. To argue against that is to discriminate. Its that simple. -- Jodon | Talk 19:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - If Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters or another policy or guideline supports using an upper case D for Deaf in certain circumstances, then the term deaf can be capitalized in those circumstances. In general, answers to issues should be supported by Wikipedia policy or guidelines. Wikipedia:Civility requires editors to participate in a respectful and considerate way. Asserting that those proposing to not use capitalization is discrimination does not participate in a respectful and considerate way. -- Jreferee (talk) 15:18, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  The policy does seem to support using the capital D for a proper name, [11]. And, as a proper name, Deaf culture gets 17.9 m Ghits. Malke 2010 (talk) 15:48, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  How do you get Google to discriminate proper-name usage of your query? You can take a step that way with their n-gram viewer, which shows a recent popularization of the cap D in "Deaf culture" (here), but it's far from consistently capitalized, so even that doesn't meet the usual standard in MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 16:22, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  I simply searched Deaf culture. That you refined your search and found a recent popularization seems to indicate society is catching on to the existence of Deaf culture and certainly in a big way with the 17.9 m hits I found. Inconsistent capitalization seems consistent with the appearance of a new culture being recognized by society. Malke 2010 (talk) 16:52, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Is it worth adding a section on this to MOS:CAPS, providing sources, thus silencing (pun intended) this matter for future reference? -- Jodon | Talk 17:09, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  If that is how these matters are handled per policy, then I'd do that. I'd also look at the WikiProject. The project should have a guideline about this. Malke 2010 (talk) 17:27, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  I've already looked at the WikiProject - there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of information there, and many of the listed members seem to be inactive. Maybe they were silenced, trying to get the project off the ground... -- Jodon | Talk 17:59, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  I don't think there's a conspiracy on Wikipedia. And I don't think Doc James would ever discriminate. I think his heart is in the right place. This just seems to be something he's not familiar with. On the WikiProject, you can certainly open a MOS guideline for the project. I'd use reliable sources that establish the proper name. Malke 2010 (talk) 19:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  Here's an interesting an article:

  • New York Times Magazine: Defiantly Deaf. Might get you started. Malke 2010 (talk) 19:40, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Massachusetts Dept of Health: Understanding Deaf Culture
  • List of articles Journal of Deaf Studies

    Yes first time I have come across this issue. My question is why does the WHO, NIH, and UK government as well as the Lancet not use caps if the matter is as settled as some make it out to be? If they did you have my support. Wikipedia is to follow not to lead the best avaliable sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:43, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

  In case you missed it, here is Malke's comment on that, from above:

  "Wikipedia policy supports capitalizing proper names. [12]. This is clearly a proper name. Deaf culture gets 17.9 m Ghits. The NIH, WHO, the UK government, none of those groups are arbiters of what is and isn't a proper name. This is a social issue and apparently society accepts it as a proper name. At least according to Google it does. And we do use Google hits to establish notability on Wikipedia."

  -- Jodon | Talk 13:00, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

  The WHO and NIH do not capitalize deafness because they are talking about a physical medical condition, not a sociocultural one. All animals are little-d deaf: they have a hearing problem but no culture. Among people with hearing problems, there are people who are deaf and people who are Deaf. The first group usually includes people who have lost hearing rather late in life and still live within the hearing culture, and the second includes people who have never heard anything, and whose community includes a lot of other people who have never heard anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  Yes, that sums it up very well. So when speaking about the Deaf community, culture, it seems appropriate to use big D, and for medical issues, small d. Malke 2010 (talk) 17:39, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - On the one hand, the capitalizing of adjectives to define cultures, such as Black, Gay, or Deaf is common, but is an exercise in political correctness. On the other hand, it is contrary to the usual principles of English usage. Both sides are wrong. I would oppose, except that Wikipedia has a culture of political correctness in which editors who oppose political correctness are likely to be subject to personal attacks. (For example, editors who opposed the renaming of Bradley Manning to Chelsea Manning for pedantic reasons were likely to be accused of transphobia.) No !vote. Support is pedantically wrong, but oppose is politically incorrect. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:43, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I doubt that you will be able to find any style guides that say capitalizing the names of cultural groups is contrary to the principles of English usage. Guides like this one say things like, " Capitalize proper names, including any particular person, object, place, project, institution, river, vessel, genus, culture, ethnic group, or formal job title". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  I was distinguishing between adjectives that have always been proper adjectives, such as Irish culture and Jewish culture, which refer to a nationality and a religion, respectively, and adjectives which have been made to be Proper by political correctness, such as Black culture or Deaf culture, when they are historically common adjectives. If Wikipedia wants to decide that those are also proper adjectives and deserve capitalization, the community can do so, but I won't vote or !vote with it. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:18, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

• Relevant: I have just posted at Talk:Deaf culture about the capitalization there as relates to WP policy, practice, and guidance. Please comment. And please try to assume good faith; I am not an evil deaf-hating conspiracist (not to make light of those if they actually exist). I'm just a guy who thinks consistency is a good thing for an encyclopedia project to have. —Frungi (talk) 10:50, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  Thank you. Someone is finally listening to me, I was beginning to think my comments were falling on "Deaf" ears. I also believe in consistency, regardless of what the outcome is, consistency between this article and that one is the issue that everybody's ignoring here, and in line with consistency, perhaps a RFC should be posted there also? -- Jodon | Talk 19:08, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  • I figure I should mention here: Given the lack of consensus on Wikipedia and among sources for capitalizing the word, I have edited Deaf culture appropriately, and I invite my fellow editors to make sure I didn’t accidentally make anything more confusing. —Frungi (talk) 06:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: I've also posted at the WP:MOS [13]. And I've also posted at the Village pump. [14]. I'm wondering if this Wiki policy might apply: [15]. Malke 2010 (talk) 20:00, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  That’s a good point: the first item of IDENTITY seems to indicate that if a group refers to itself as Deaf (or Gay, or Black, etc.), then so should we. But it says nothing about capitalization, so we’re back to square one. Also, this use of the word might contradict the third item, “Use specific terminology”; it could easily cause confusion with so little (or no) differentiation between “deaf/Deaf” referring to the culture and “deaf” referring to the medical condition that largely defines that culture. (See User:sroc’s comments at MOS Talk for examples.) —Frungi (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

• I got tired of the ambiguity of the overall issue with just focusing on this one part of it, so I started an RfC at the MOS: Capitalization of adjectives for groups. This RfC seems like it would be dependent on that more general question, so I suggest it be closed until that’s resolved. —Frungi (talk) 23:13, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  @Frungi: Yes, this could be closed. But the RfC you've started may cause confusion on the MOS talk page as the discussion I've started there was already well under way. Could you incorporate your RfC within the older discussion to avoid any confusion? Thanks. Malke 2010 (talk) 23:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  I don’t think that would particularly make sense; I think my RfC is broader in scope and more relevant to the MOS than the discussion about a single word. It’s not just about “Deaf/deaf”, which was the primary focus of the previous discussion. And I don’t think we should even be discussing whether we can capitalize “Deaf” when it’s not even clear whether there’s consensus for capitalizing anything. —Frungi (talk) 00:27, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

• The really, really depressing thing about this whole discussion is that it didn't take place on the first of April. Apparently there really are this many people who actually care this much about whether a word is written with a capital letter or not. JamesBWatson (talk) 00:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I just want grammer keep as simple as possible :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:13, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

There is no consensus on Wikipedia for capitalizing cultural terms that are not derived from proper names (see MOS:CAPS, particularly WP:DOCTCAPS, and the RfC explicitly about this question). This RfC is about capitalizing one particular cultural term not derived from a proper name, and neutral (i.e. outside of deaf culture) reliable sources do not appear to consistently capitalize it. What more is there to discuss here that wouldn’t be better addressed to MOS:CAPS? What justification is there for making this an exception to the rule, if no change to the rule is desired? —173.199.215.5 (talk) 00:08, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Terminology: deaf vs hard-of-hearing

Is there a difference in meaning between deaf and hard-of-hearing? Recommending a blind person get a pair of glasses would be considered somewhat insensitive. Yet for complete deafness, it is a common occurrence to speak of hearing aids. Is there an accepted terminology for explaining the difference between slightly impaired hearing and complete deafness? 91.125.202.31 (talk) 16:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Hearing aids are useless in complete deafness. I recommend that you read the article. The lead section contains the sentence

While the results are expressed in decibels, hearing loss is usually described as mild, mild-moderate, moderate, moderately severe, severe, or profound.

and the first* section, Definition, goes into some detail.

* counting the lead, which has no separate header, as #0

--Thnidu (talk) 04:09, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Brock University professional and therapeutic communications class wikipedia editing

Hello, we are first year students of the Brock University nursing program, and have been assigned this page to edit as part of an assignment for our Professional and Therapeutic Communications class. We hope that this page benefits from our edits, as we have put much time and effort into improving this page. For further information, here is the link to our group talk page, where we discussed our edits for the Hearing loss page: User talk:As13sx/HearingLossGroup. Avery (talk) 20:43, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I have chosen to add a “Communication barriers” section to this page, as it is relevant to the material that we are learning in our Communications course. I also felt that this information was important to include in the article because it allows someone who is reading the article to understand the common communication barriers experienced by deaf individuals, and how they affect major aspects of their life. After extensive research and collaboration, my group found that communication barriers most commonly affect a deaf individual’s communication with family, peers and the community, workplace, and in health care. Understanding the effect of communication barriers in these four areas is important because they are evident in the everyday interactions of an individual with hearing loss, and can therefore have a major impact on their life. Avery (talk) 22:26, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I’ve added an introductory paragraph to the Communication barriers section because I felt the section needed a paragraph that could briefly introduce the topic to the readers. Instead of just delving right into communication barriers with the other sections, it provides a foundation where the other sections build off from. Additionally, it is beneficial to understand the major personal barriers that hearing loss causes within individuals and how it affects their everyday interaction and communication with people (as Avery had also mentioned). Adriana As13sx (talk) 23:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

In the communication barriers section, I focused on "communications in healthcare." While my colleague, Avery focused on what services and technology health care professionals could implement, I thought it was appropriate to include what healthcare professionals could do themselves to make the experience for the hearing impaired individual more enjoyable. Diana Tat (talk) 01:25, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I targeted the Sign language section under Society and culture because I thought it could use a bit of editing and expanding. In the first paragraph, I changed up a few of the words because I felt that the sentences lacked fluent structure. I did not drastically change the paragraph. I thought it would be in the benefit of the reader to have this section organized into different sub-sections, including The history of sign language, Multiple types of sign language and Communication methods. This makes the section easier to navigate. As you will have noticed, The history of sign language section is entirely new. I think it not only is interesting, but important to understand where the basis of sign language evolved from. You will notice that there is only one source cited at the end of the entire paragraph, in which that is the book where I have gotten all of my information from. Under the Multiple types of sign language section, I added the second paragraph of the original article. I also added an additional sentence that I felt was relevant to the information being discussed there. Additionally, I placed the third, original paragraph into the School section under Society and culture because the information being discussed in that paragraph is more relevant to schools than sign language. Under School, you will find this paragraph under a sub-section I’ve titled The first deaf schools. I think that this paragraph is to be the first one listed under the School section because it fits best with the paragraph order. Adriana As13sx (talk) 23:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I took over the sub-section of communication methods. I originally intended to just focus on American Sign Language, but after further research, I realized there were so many other types of way of communicating as a hard hearing individual. I think many people are under the impression that people who have hearing loss communicate in one pure type of sign language. In reality, there are several different communication approaches (which also very regionally) which combine various modalities. In a therapeutic setting, depending on what communication approach the family decides to use can affect how the child develops language and understanding. I thought this was important to note.Diana Tat (talk) 01:25, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Under the Management section under Hearing aids, I was aware that a Wiki editor had requested that the sentence previously mentioned be coupled with a credible, secondary source. I took the initiative to research the basic definition of hearing aids and I replaced the original sentences with two new ones and I cited the source. In addition to this, I explained how hearing aids are relevant to a deaf individual’s self-esteem and how they affect their communication with others. I think it is good to understand how such a device can affect a person socially. Adriana As13sx (talk) 23:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I added a few points in the assistive devices section. My first point addressed the telecommunications device for the deaf. I found that TDD and TTY were pretty much used interchangeably, but TTY had much more information on it's wikipedia page than TDD did, so I decided to make the point focus on TTY, and make TDD as another "common name." I also elaborated a little further on TTY communication with other individuals and the device itself. I I added a point about transmitters, which I thought was important because transmitters are crucial for individuals who are completely deaf. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to be notified of fire alarms and phone calls. Diana Tat (talk) 01:33, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Under the "Communication in the workplace" section i chose to add a few points that were more positive about deaf people in the workplace. I focused on the fact that co-workers could take it upon themselves to attend sign language classes part-time or full-time. I thought that this would be beneficial to add as it allows the hearing impaired employee the ability to communicate with their co-workers, and participate in daily conversations etc. I then added a paragraph to the "Communication with peers and in the community" that focused on children that are deaf. It explains children's difficulties in daily life, and how they have to cope with being deaf. I also added a few sentences about the ways children can attend activities that provide them with the opportunity to learn how to sign, and to communicate with children around their age. This gives the children a chance to partake in normal life activities, and be around children in their same situations. I also then added a few pictures. One, of a child signing, and another of two adults communicating using sign language. I have noticed that they were taken down, and would like to apologize if they were not acceptable for wikipedia. Kp13mn (talk) 04:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys! As13sx Diana Tat Avery Kp13mn I have been assigned to provide feedback on your edits on this article by our Professor. To begin, I would like to congratulate you on the amazing job that you have done editing this article and adding very informative and significant information about communication and communication barriers affected by those with hearing loss. While reading through what you have added and edited to this article, I noticed a few small points I could present you with feedback on. As you probably already know, Wikipedia has Five Pillars, one of them being that the information posted on Wikipedia must have a neutral point of view, meaning that each article strives for major points of view being explained in a balanced and impartial manner. This pillar also states that articles should not feature opinions of any sort. You have done this very well overall, however while reading I caught one line in the Communication Barriers paragraph where you had stated "All of these language barriers makes it difficult..." which can be read from the eyes of a viewer that you are saying all of these language barriers for sure make it difficult... etc. This could lead someone to believe that although you are not specifically stating that this is your opinion, they could believe that this could be based off an opinion that you had, whether the statement is cited or not. By re- wording this statement, could eliminate this possible view by readers, adding to the effectiveness of your article. Another point I had noticed when reading is that with the amount of amazing information that you had added to this article, the long paragraphs could make it somewhat hard for the reader to find important information that they might need when viewing your article! Don't get me wrong the information you had added is excellent, and I would not change anything about it, but if I may make a suggestion, I would say try to keep some information in the paragraph format, and then change some of it into point form, such as the examples you have provided. This will provide an easier way to find and read through the information you have provided. Other than these two points, what you have added and edited is completed very thoroughly and well. Amazing job everyone, you are through the most difficult part of this assignment, and you have edited your first Wikipedia page! Congratulations again! :) Vs12vf (talk) 20:36, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Vs12vf, that is very helpful feedback! We will take your two points into consideration as we make our edits. Are there any specific paragraphs that you think should be broken down to have point form examples? Avery (talk) 20:54, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

You are very welcome! Avery I think the two paragraphs you could possibly change into point form to enhance effectiveness is "Communication with Peers and in the Community" and "Communication in Health Care"! Vs12vf (talk) 03:05, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Avery and group, be careful about lists. They seem to often not be recommended. SeeWikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists --LynnMcCleary (talk) 04:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Vs12vf, in terms of this sentence: "All of these language barriers makes it difficult..." you mentioned how it can be interpreted as a personal opinion, however I do not agree. The source from which I obtained information regarding Communication barriers clearly explains how speech sound production, pitch, resonance of voice, prosody and further speech and language problems makes communication with others difficult. I do not think this would negatively affect the article. In terms of your feedback regarding our paragraph length, I do agree with you. The fact that it is so long may cause readers to lose interest. We will definitely consider editing the structures by using multiple, smaller paragraphs. I do not think the use of point form is necessary. As LynnMcCleary as well as the Wiki manual had said, point form lists are not recommended and I do not think they would flow well. Thanks for all of your feedback, Vs12vf! Adriana As13sx (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey Adriana ! You are very welcome for the feedback! Your article has already improved with the points from my feedback and the feedback of others! Congratulations again! Vs12vf (talk) 08:14, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Edits

Hey you guys, I'm the second reviewer of your article edits! As13sx Diana Tat Avery Kp13mn If it's okay I'd like to give you some feedback. First off, you guys did an awesome job with this article. Your edits were well-written by showing a clear purpose and complying with the manual style guidelines. The edits were mostly verifiable, one area I noticed could use maybe one more citation was the communication with peers and in the community since it was a fairly big piece of information with only one part sourced in the middle. Your edits totally nailed the broad aspect of an article because they all related back to hearing loss, never got off topic and were neutral in wording. With the great information you added it might have looked nice to add a picture by the communication barriers section to break up the words a little bit and make it easier to read. Overall I think you definitely improved the quality of this article. I also just want to mention my favorite part of your edits was the new communication barrier section because as we've learned in our program, communication is an extremely important part of coping with illnesses or obstacles like hearing loss. In addition to that I also found the history of ASL the most interesting addition to the article. Really great job you guys :) Hw13na (talk) 15:27, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback talk, I am glad that you enjoyed our contributions to the article! When we first made the edits to our article, we attempted to add a picture to our article like you suggested, however unfortunately the other editors took it down. We will have to try and find another one, as I do agree that it would make the article look more appealing and break up the long paragraphs. Avery (talk) 01:43, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Hw13na! I agree with what you've said about adding a citation to the Communication with peers and in the community section. Another colleague of mine, Avery has already sent a post to another member of our group, Kayleen regarding the second paragraph of that section (which was written by her) and told her to add a citation at the end there. I think she may have forgotten to do so. Thanks for catching that! In terms of the picture, Kayleen is also going to try and upload 1 or 2. She did upload 2 before, however they got taken down, as Avery had already said. We though it was done properly but we violated copyright somehow so we did some searching to see how to properly upload images corresponding to copyright laws. She will try again. Also, I'm very glad that you learned from what we've written and found various sections interesting!! Thanks for all of your positivity and feedback! It is much appreciated. Adriana As13sx (talk) 20:46, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys, As13sx Diana Tat Avery Kp13mn I have been assigned to provide feedback on your edits on this article assigned by our Professor. I would like to begin by saying you guys did a fantastic job editing this article, the information was very helpful and it looked like a lot of time and effort went into editing this page. I looked your sandbox, and I found that you guys had great discussions about what to improve on your article and communicated effectively. I also noticed that most of the important information posted in your summaries on your talk page were incorporated into the actual article. When referencing back to Wikipedia:Five pillars I think you guys did a great job of making sure the content was neutral in tone, I couldn't find anything that sounded one sided. Also I think you guys used good grammar and sentence structure for this article every sentence flowed nicely into the next. However, I found some things that can be improved on:

1) Try to add more citations in some paragraphs. Specifically the communication with peers and in the community and communication barriers section contained a lot of important information but only a couple citations were used to back up the information given. Also in the History of sign language section there was a lot of background information on sign language with only one source cited in the paragraph. It is important to cite to make the article verifiable and to show that there was no original research done by the editors.

The reason why we only have a few citations is our source covered everything mentioned before the citation. I do understand that having little citations makes our article look unreliable, so we will do our best to find more sources to back up what we already have. Thank you for your suggestion! Diana Tat (talk) 19:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

2) I also think adding an image would help give a visual understanding to the readers of what is being talked about. A visual image is listed under Wikipedia:Good article criteria and would help separate some of the longer paragraphs. Maybe the addition of a diagram to the communication barriers section in relation to hearing loss because it is a lengthy section, and an image added to that section would help give a better visual of the barriers.

I agree adding a photo would definitely be more pleasing to the eye, unfortunately we did previously try to add a couple images, but they were removed because of copyright issues. We will be going back and finding photos that do not have copyright. Diana Tat (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

3) Since some of the paragraphs are quite lengthy the use of bullet points or sub headings might be helpful to help break up some of the information also. For example, when you say "Examples include being unable to tell their family what they have learned, what they did, asking for help, or even simply being unable to interact in daily conversation" in the communication with peers and in the community section maybe either put that into bullet points or start a new paragraph after that sentence to break up the longer paragraph.

Thank you for your suggestion! As a group we've decided that using bullet points wouldn't be appropriate with the context of our information, but to make our edits easier to read for viewers, we have decided to possibly separate our text by separating them into paragraphs. Diana Tat (talk) 19:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

4) Also, after looking at your talk page I saw one of the summaries included Erik Erikson's theory of development particularly focusing on the challenges in the adolescent stage. I saw that you guys thought about relating this to the challenges that adolescence with hearing loss face. When reading your communication with peers and in the community section I saw that you talked about the challenges of deaf children, but not really adolescence. I think maybe adding in the part that Erik Erikson states about adolescence feeling very self conscious then relating that to hearing impairment, might be an interesting point to add to this section for variety in age groups.

Overall when comparing your article to the Wikipedia:Good article criteria I found that yours was well written, verifiable with some good references and comprehensive to read. Great job editing your first wikipedia article everyone! Cf13za (talk) 18:47, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Cf13za! Thanks for all of your positive comments regarding our article! I'm glad that you have been so pleased! I understand your concern regarding citations. I know there are only a few, however it is from these citations that we acquired all of our information, as Diana Tat had already mentioned. Adding additional citations to various sentences of the paragraphs would indicate that the sentences without these citations have no source. That would then infer non-verifiability, which is not what we want. Adding other sources would require additional research and summarizing which is difficult because of our limited time with this assignment. For future reference, I think other editors could perform some additional research to support our present information. Adriana As13sx (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

In terms of your suggestion of adding an image, Kayleen (another group member of ours) is currently working on finding 1 or 2 pictures. I agree, images always support written information nicely. As is mentioned by Diana Tat, the use of bullet points is unnecessary. It does not fit well with Wikipedia article structure. The separation of paragraphs is a good edit to consider though! Thanks! Adriana As13sx (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I will look into what you have said about the use of Erik Erikson's theory in the Communication with peers and the community section. I really like how you've made the connection there. I will most definitely consider it! Thanks for your input, Cf13za! Adriana As13sx (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys!As13sx Diana Tat Avery Kp13mn I’d first like to congratulate the four of you on successfully editing a wikipedia page; and doing a very good job at it I might add! I was looking at your private talk page of just the four of you, and It was extremely organized and well-planned, and I can tell you all spent a lot of time and effort researching this topic and coming up with new information and edits to add to the Hearing Loss Wikipedia page. There are a couple of ideas I’d like to add on top of the other editors critiques. Here are my thoughts: There are many references that you have used throughout your edits, but the citations among the text seem scarce. That doesn’t mean that you need more references, but there can be more than one citation per paragraph. For example, in the Communication with peers in the community, there is only one citation for two long paragraphs. There is a large amount of information in that section, and not a lot of references to back it up, so even just repeating the citations so readers know where this information came from can help. The Communication in health care section is a good example of this because the paragraphs contain citations all throughout, and they repeat the same citations as well. I looked at other random Wikipedia articles and they seem to do the same thing. On a different note, I really liked the way you organized your information together, it seems to flow from one idea to the next. Although I do agree with the other editors, when they say that you could break up the huge paragraphs somehow, since seeing all that information piled up in one big paragraph can be a little intimidating. Another thing I'd like to point out is that under the Communication methods section, I think that all the communication methods (auditory-verbal, auditory-oral, cued speech, etc.) should be linked to another Wikipedia page, so that when you click on the blue word, it takes the reader to another page that has more information on that topic. This was done to the american sign language under the School section, and I think it should be done to all communication methods, as I'm sure there is already an existing Wikipedia page on these topics. Other than that, you guys did an amazing job editing this article, and I can’t find anything else to add for you to fix. I enjoyed reading this article and learning about hearing loss! Sp14ud (talk) 01:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! I will be linking the communication methods to it's relative Wikipedia page. I do agree that this would allow readers to get an in-depth description of each method. Diana Tat (talk) 19:42, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying about the references, however I do not think it is essential to add multiple citations throughout our article because it may deem the sentences in between that are not cited to be unverifiable. I think the repetitive use of references in the Communication in health care section is fine because the paragraphs have been split up in order to allow for good flow, therefore some paragraphs need to be cited again to determine where the information has come from. For example, the first and last paragraphs originate from the same source, so it was necessary to cite both twice. I notice that the first paragraph actually has the same source cited twice throughout, like you've mentioned. I think it's fine to do this, too because there are multiple sentences in between, but I don't think it's necessary for every paragraph. I appreciate all of your feedback, Sp14ud! Adriana As13sx (talk) 21:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello everyone, as a group we would like to personally thank you all again for your excellent feedback on our edits! We will be going over our article again and making changes based on your feedback, as well as minor changes to sentence structure and flow of writing. Part of our changes will be attempting to add another few pictures to the article, as this is what everyone's feedback suggested. In our original edits we added pictures, but they were taken off by the other editors almost immediately. Hopefully this will not happen again. Avery (talk) 20:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Since feedback also mentioned to break up some of the longer paragraphs, I have split the Communication with peers and in the community section into two paragraphs. One paragraph focuses more generally on the communication barriers and their effect on a deaf individual's involvement in the community and development of peer relationships. The other paragraph goes into more specific detail on communication barriers for the deaf child, and the effect that they can have on their lives. Due to Lynn's comment, as well as additional research on professionally formatting a Wikipedia article, we decided as a group not to include point form information in our sections. Although this would make the information easier to read, we do not feel that it mimics a professionally written encyclopedia article. However, I have noticed that the second paragraph in this section does require a citation. Kp13mn I believe that you wrote this section, could you please add that in? It must have just been forgotten in the whirlwind of our editing! I have split the Communication in the workplace section into two paragraphs as well. One paragraph talks about the specific communication barriers and how they affect the working conditions and environment of the deaf individual. The other paragraph focuses how we can prevent and narrow these communication barriers to avoid these issues. Avery (talk) 20:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

In support of Avery's statement about not using bullet points to display our information, another editor had posted within the Myths section of the Hearing loss article about how a list format would be better presented using prose. Therefore, it is best to stay away from the use of lists. I think that the way we have written our article looks better with the newly separated paragraphs anyways in comparison to if we were to display our information using bullet points. Adriana As13sx (talk) 22:05, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Many people also mentioned that we should add extra citations to our longer paragraphs in their feedback. However, in many of our paragraphs, such as the Communication with peers and family section, all of the information was derived from the same source. We asked Lynn if it was appropriate to make our citation at the end of the section, and she said that this was ok. We feel that adding the same citations throughout the paragraph would be repetitive and unnecessary, and adding extra citations from different sources would require us to completely change our information. Therefore, we will most likely keep this formatting the same in our edits, however we thank you again for expressing an interest in improving our article. Avery (talk) 19:31, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for all your suggestions! I have taken a couple of suggestions and made some changes. Underneath communication methods I have taken one of the suggestions by directly linking each method to an existing Wikipedia page. I believe this is beneficial to the article because it gives the readers a more in depth idea of what each method is. Fully going into detail about each method in the hearing loss article would have strayed too far away from the topic, so this change was much needed. However, I could not find a Wikpedia page for the auditory-oral method.

I have also fixed my citation that was mentioned by Doc James. My source was originally cited wrongly as a book, when it was really an online article which is the reason why an ISBN was not found. I have fixed the format of my citation. I have also removed the excess capitals underneath communication methods. Diana Tat (talk) 19:42, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback! I used Cf13za's suggestion in terms of adding information to the Communication with peers and in the community section. I did not discuss Erik Erikson's theory in relation to adolescence particularly because I used some of this information in the Hearing aids section under Management. However, by reviewing my summary for that chapter once more I thought the information pertaining to Lee Meyer's adjustment patterns that can help adults with hearing loss was relevant to the topic at hand. Thank again Cf13za! You lead me to review my past chapter summary and in turn, I was able to make an additional contribution to the Hearing loss article! Adriana As13sx (talk) 23:51, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I just read over your additional edit Adriana, and I think that it is an excellent contribution to the Communication with peers and family section of the article! I think that it is valuable for one to understand how someone who is deaf can adjust their attitude towards their impairment, as this can ultimately positively affect their communication skills. Avery (talk) 04:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Avery! I am glad you agree! Adriana As13sx (talk) 04:30, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Issues

This text has issues

Extended content

Communication methods Hearing loss can affect an individuals acoustics during speech and delay the development of expressive and receptive spoken language. This can result in the limit of academic performance and the extent of an individuals vocabulary. The early detection of hearing loss in children can help maximize the development of auditory skills and spoken language. Once a family is aware of their children’s hearing loss, they can decide what communication approach they would like to implement for their child. There are several different types of sign language/communication options which hearing impaired individuals can use in their everyday language. The following communication options can be considered along a spoken and visual language continuum. Auditory-Verbal (AV) Communication is developed through the use of a hearing aid and the integration of hearing impaired individuals into a community of individuals who have hearing and use spoken language. During therapy, the individual is not permitted to view facial expressions and the lips of the speaker. Since the goal of this communication method is complete integration in the mainstream, the individual is not at all exposed to sign language. Auditory-Oral The auditory-oral approach to communication is similar to auditory-verbal in the sense a hearing aid is used and the individual is integrated in a spoken language community. Unlike auditory-verbal, the individual is permitted to use facial expressions, lip reading and gestures to receive messages and communicate. Cued Speech Cued speech is a visual type of communication. It is made up of eight hand shapes and four different hand locations around the face (at the lips, side of lips chin and throat). Each handshake represents a group of constanants. Constants in each group can be distinguished through lipreading. Vowels are expressed by positioning the hand to one of the four locations around the lower face. Cued speech helps improve lipreading skills and understanding of speech of individuals who do not cue. It is said that people can learn cued speech in 18 hours. Manually Coded English (MCE) MCE is a close representation of spoken english. MCE uses signs and finger spelling. MCE’s syntax follows the rules of spoken english and lexical items which have no specific signs are finger spelled. Morphemes are represented by certain gestures or finger spellings. Total Communication (TC) Individuals who use TC combine signs, gestures, lip reading, auditory speech and hearing aids to communicate. In schools, TC is the most common communication method. Simultaneous Communication (SimCom) SimCom is very similar to TC, except amplification from a hearing aid isn’t used. American Sign Language (ASL) ASL is a language completely separate from English and is purely visual. It is considered by deaf culture its own language. ASL has its own rules for grammar, word order and pronunciation. The syntax of ASL differs from English because sentence structure begins with the subject, followed by a predicate. Individuals communicate using hand shapes, direction and motion of the hands, body language and facial expressions. While English speakers normally use an upward inflection in their tone to ask a question, ASL users ask a question by raising their eyebrows or scrunching their forehead. Magnification and exaggeration of certain signs can convey different meanings. For example, exaggerated movement of the sign for "happy" would mean "very happy." ASL varies regionally.

There is one ref at the very bottom. It does not have an ISBN. Is not using the WP:cite template and does not state any page numbers. Does it support all the text or just the last sentence? There are also too many capitals in the headings.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

@Kp13mn, Ar14bj, As13sx, and Dt13nz:, please let Doc James know whether this problem is in the part of the article that you edited and try to figure out how to clarify the sourcing. If it's a problem that existed before you edited that you can't easily resolve, it would be great to flag it for future editors (or for you to take up in your post course editing lives).LynnMcCleary (talk) 04:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Issue was introduced by User:As13sx in these edits [16] and did not exist before. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:50, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Doc James, thank you for addressing this issue. My colleague, Diana Tat, had worked on the paragraph concerning that source. I've talked to her and she will be fixing that citation up shortly. In addition, we will fix up the capitals in the headings. Adriana As13sx (talk) 19:37, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

The citation supports the whole text. I do realize I did not properly cite the article. I will fix this. I have also fixed the capitals. Diana Tat (talk) 19:44, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Worldwide distribution of deafness

I have read anecdotal mentions of high rates of deafness in certain geographical areas. This could be related to genetics, disease, climate, etc. Could somebody please find or create a map or table on rates of deafness around the world, or a link to a website that has this information. Pete unseth (talk) 20:42, 3 February 2015 (UTC)