Oh my god, the “I need glasses so I’m disabled” people have found my post. If your vision is correctable to 20/20, you’re REALLY stretching the definition of disabled
Like you wouldn’t get laughed out of a disability support group, but you’d SURE piss a whole lot of the members off by acting like it’s the same thing.
“I can’t drive without my glasses therefore I’m disabled”
well I can’t walk in hot concrete without shoes but wearing those certainly doesn’t make me disabled
Yeah like… It’s probably technically comparable to having a hearing impairment that can be brought into the range of average hearing ability by means of a hearing aid… BUT there is so much difference between those two things in terms of 1. the availability of the accommodation, and 2. how “normal” it is considered by society in general.
Which are things that shouldn’t be problems in an ideal world, but well…
I think if there’s any comparison that should be done between them, it’s along the lines of “we should make other accommodations as unstigmatized and easy to get as glasses.”
first of all, hearing impairment is broadly considered an outdated and offensive term, deaf/hard of hearing are more appropriate
hearing aids can’t bring people’s hearing to normal levels because they do not correct that accommodate. they just make noises louder and they are imperfect at doing so. louder often means less intelligible not to mention the quality of the speakers in hearing aids…. they’re not always so great. they can come across grainy and I have the phonak audeo lumity- one of the newest models. think about music in an old car. if you’re not understanding the lyrics you might turn it up- how much does it help? the noise is louder, and it certainly gives you some more clarity, but now it’s louder and comes with all the struggles of louder. there’s more noise competition with louder. some of this is definitely me speaking from having ANSD which causes issues with speech deciphering in noisy environments but it’s something I know many D/HOH people struggle with.
there’s a lot that I still can’t hear even with hearing aids because the hearing aid microphone simply does not pick up on the sound. hearing aid microphones are very sensitive but not sensitive enough to pick up on a lot of environmental noise that gives clues to what’s happening around me. I miss a lot of footsteps, people sneak up on me a lot even with my hearing aids. sometimes hearing aid microphones can be too sensitive. have you ever tried filming with your phone in the wind? yeah. imagine trying to understand a conversation right next to you through that noise.
and I really could just go on about the imperfections of hearing aids- all the ways they accommodate but don’t correct. at the core of it, though, they’re accommodating. they’re not returning someone’s hearing back to typical levels they’re making sound louder. they’re much more equivalent to a wheelchair. a wheelchair doesn’t return someone’s use of their legs to typical, it gives people the ability to move.
Thanks very much for all this information. I’m trying to understand these things better, because I’ve recently started having problems (with my eyes but more especially with my ability to walk) and I’m in a place where I don’t know if I’m going to get better or worse, and it’s overwhelming me.
I kind of went off writing a long post about it just now, because the discussion on this post started stressing me out thinking about my own problems (I don’t know if “problems” is a good word, it sounds overly negative, like “impairment,” but if it doesn’t count as “disability” because I might be able to correct it to normal levels… I don’t even know.)
Anyway. Thanks for being willing to explain some of this. It’s very much needed.