Australia: The rise of Deaf Pride

[Francis Hult]

Eureka Street

 

The rise of Deaf Pride

 

Recently, the ABC aired an interview with the CEO of a successful company promoting the cochlear implant, the pride of Australian technical and business achievement which, implanted in a deaf person, can enable that person to hear perfectly. 

 

Perhaps he did not use the word 'perfect', but that was certainly the sense of the interview. The company's website is more circumspect, promising merely that the device is 'designed to provide useful hearing sensations'. 

 

That interview grated on me. There was in it an implied hubris, veiled as sincerity, that technology could make deaf people 'normal'. It wasn't the soppy interviewer or the cheerful, can-do attitude of the man being interviewed - he has shareholders to keep happy, after all - so much as the unwarranted interference in the personal lives of people who may not want his expensive gadgetry.

 

Full story:

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=16495

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