How To Get A Deaf Person's Attention

Getting a deaf person’s attention may not be as hard as one thinks, but it’s not as easy as one thinks either, because the deaf world and the hearing world are two very different worlds. They have different cultures, different approaches, and different ways to communicate. Therefore, the deaf world can be a bit difficult for hearing people at first; the same applies to the deaf person when approaching the hearing world because the world is not the same for everyone.

We, the deaf community get approached by hearing people every so often and we’re ready to respond to the strangers who can hear that we are deaf and that we can’t hear what they are saying. And that we are not ashamed to tell you that we are deaf or pretend we can hear you, because we want you to understand that there are hearing impaired individuals among us (humans). We want you to ask us the deaf people what is the best way for us the deaf people to communicate. However, the majority of hearing people just apologize as if they made a mistake by approaching us then leave in a hurry, which is both rude and intimidating to the deaf community. You may think it’s OK to say, ‘I’m sorry’ and walk away when you’ve finally gotten a deaf person’s attention.   But honestly, it’s intimidating, disappointing, and beyond rude.

It takes us (deaf people) two minutes to explain to the hearing world that we are deaf. But it takes them two seconds to apologize and disappear. It’s unfair. In this essay, I will proceed to teach you how to approach a deaf person if it’s your first time you met a deaf person for the first time. The more you learn about the deaf culture the better you do when you meet deaf people.

1 Move into their visual field.

In order to get a deaf person’s attention, you must move to their field of vision, which is moving in their front or their both sides. This is a crucial tip for deaf people because a deaf person can’t hear your voice; they need to see you. Making eye contact is also crucial for this in hearing culture too, not only deaf culture.

2 Tap their shoulder gently with the pad of your fingers.

Attach your four fingers together to make them a pad of fingers then gently tap the deaf person’s shoulders, there is no specific shoulder – just tap the shoulder closest to you and make it about three taps. No pokes, no slapping, and no punching or other inappropriate things because it will be rude, and you’ll get a frowning face from whoever’s attention you were trying to get. Don’t worry about receiving backlash about touching a stranger, since deaf people are so used the touch. As long as you tap the correct place, which is their shoulders.

3 Wave your hands in the air.

This tip is very important but it’s even more important to move into the person’s visual field first. After you move into their field of vision, wave one or both of your hands in the air and repeat this until the person sees you or your hands are too tired to move anymore.  But if waving is no use to them, find another way to approach them.

4 Rap the table.

This tip is used when you are sitting at a table with a group or an individual, but the person you’re sitting with is a little too far for you to reach his/her shoulders to tap and won’t respond to your waving hands. Don’t worry, just rap the table not too violently just a bit gently so the table can send enough vibration to the person. Do that only if the person is in contact with the table otherwise the vibration won’t work for the individual. This is a very effective way to get a deaf person’s attention when the place is too crowded, or the audience is too busy communicating.

5 Flick light but not too fast.

This is used for audience or a room full of deaf people. Turn the light off and wait for about two seconds before turning it on again. This is important because if you flick the light in a fast pace, it will indicate an emergency, and you don’t want to frighten your class/audience, or make the room look haunted. This is for an audience, so if you want an individual pays attention, then you must go and approach the individual by yourself. If you don’t get everyone’s attention by the first flick, repeat the action twice but not 3^rd or 4^th because it would freak the audience out. However, if there are still people who are not attentive yet, ask another person to get their attention.

6 Second hand help.

This tip is used when you ask someone to help you get an individual’s attention. It’s called second hand help, and you tell the person next to your target individual to pass you to his neighbor. This tip is important when it’s hard for you to get the attention of your target individual. For example, you’re in the middle of your assignment speech, but one of your students is hooked with his phone. You don’t want him to miss the important homework assignment, but you can’t suspend the speech and go to approach him in person because he won’t be noticing your waving hands anyway. So, you tell the other students who are attentive to tap him for you, and when they do, you tell him to pay attention for the homework assignment.

7 Establish a comfortable distance.

After you finally get the deaf person’s attention, you establish a comfortable distance. Don’t come too close or stay too far because both are awkward positions while trying to communicate with a deaf person. Therefore, it is essential to maintain your respective distance and be respectful to their boundaries.

PS

I, myself, as a deaf person who is married to a hearing spouse and grew up around hearing people, have experienced many rude ways that people tried to get my attention. I remember that somtimes my own mother who would rather clap or hiss at me knowing my hearing condition, which is a little too sensitive to those noises. However, it was the most annoying thing that ever happened to me. I don’t blame her about this or ever mentioned to her how annoying it was, because she came from a different culture, in a place where there is no deaf culture, and she never had met a deaf person since she arrived in the United States. I’m the first deaf person she ever met. This is the reason I picked this topic for the essay. I want to educate hearing people like my mother, so next time they meet a deaf person, they approach and conversate in a respectful manner.

When you approach a deaf person, and you realize that the person is deaf, never apologize and leave immediately. Because, first of all, deafness is not a disease that we’ll pass to you. It’s a condition, and it doesn’t mean that someone is deaf because they’re miserable or they live in a miserable life. Perhaps you may not intend to act like you’re pitying them for being deaf, but that is how it sounds to the deaf community.

Deaf people don’t want your pity or sympathy. They want your understanding, inclusion, and acceptance. So, if you ever meet a deaf person, don’t just apologize and flee from the scene, instead, asking the person which method works for him or her to communicate. Some deaf people read lips, some write, others use gestures, and we are happy to assist you in every way we can.

My Self-Acceptance

It’s July 2011, I was lying on my bed at my mother’s apartment pondering what will my life become. My mother just informed me that she scheduled my Cochlear Implant (CI) surgery appointment with Mayo clinic in Rochester, MN. In two weeks, we would be driving an hour and a half down to Rochester for the operation and it was a matter of time for me to make a life changing decision. However, something was missing. As I lay there wondering what had gotten into me. Why am I not jumping over the moon? I have been traveling around the world for the past six years of my life to seek treatment, to restore my hearing ability.

 It was at this time, that I was able to come to peace with my hearing loss.

Still laying on that bed, questions flooded on my mind. Will the implant help me hear again? Will it cause me any harm? Will it change who I am? Is it worth the risk of possible side effect? But most of all, the most important question that was on my mind was: do I really want this procedure?

Six years before that day back in my native country, I was a normal person like the rest of the people--nobody paid any attention to if I was there or not, but after I suddenly lost my hearing ability, I become the center of the attention. It felt like I suddenly transformed from an invisible person whom no one paid attention to, to a person whom everyone stared at, pointed fingers at, threw stones at, and called names. So yes, I wanted to be hearing again, I wanted to be the invisible person that no one paid attention to, I wanted to be equal of the rest of the people. And most of all, I wanted to feel safe walking on the streets once again.

Aside from the deep depression of feeling helpless and desperate of support and solace, there were many other challenges and barriers that I had to face. Communication was the top challenge; I came from a country of verbal--we send each other verbal messages, give verbal instructions, tell our histories verbally, and our folktales verbally. Because the majority of people in my native country are illiterate due to being pastoralists coupled with almost three decades of civil war that hindered people from education. Therefore, it was impossible for me to communicate by writing, some women had face veils, which made it impossible for me to lipread, others simply turned away and started arranging their small shops, leaving me frustrated and wondering how much this soap bar costs. Although I was fortunate enough to learn how to read and write my native language before I lost my hearing -- still it didn’t help me much. People were not interested in writing for me. Therefore, they talked, talked, and talked. So yes, I wanted to be hearing again; I was tired of being yelled at, kicked out of shops because I couldn’t hear them, and I hated receiving questions like: are you deaf? When, surely, I was deaf.

Another challenge back in my native country was people’s perspectives toward the disabled women coupled with the lack of human rights. Being both disabled and a woman, I was treated as if I was an incomplete human being, I was told that I was half as worthy as the non-disabled girls of my age. I was not worthy of a good bride’s price if I got married. I was not worthy of a decent man, instead I could only marry an older, already married, poor or disabled man like me. I was not worthy of proper education instead only allowed to take care of the house chores. So yes, I wanted to be equal to my peers, I wanted my life to be successful and to live a happy life. In my native country, peer competition is what motivates most young girls and middle-aged women. And honestly all the young girls are advised to walk in the footsteps of their successful peers.

The most depressive thing back in my native country was my family; my family stopped talking to me. They only spoke to me when they needed to tell me something otherwise I was not worthy their time. My grandmother who raised me turned all the misunderstandings and mis-interpretations that took place into comedic entertainment to tell people. “Can you believe it, I asked her if she added sugar in the tea--she talked about the water truck instead.” It was the most difficulty thing trying to understand what they were saying, and I may have misinterpreted words and phrases; instead of correcting them for me, they made fun of me. They refused to tell me where they were taking me or where I was supposed to go. They only told me to dress up and go with them and I would be following them around like a leash-less puppy. So yes, I wanted to hear again, I wanted to hear what everyone was saying. I hated them laughing at me. I didn’t like following them around all day not knowing what I was going to do or where I was going.

The final challenge that made me want to take the procedure was because of my family’s effort; they spent both their time and their finance to restore my hearing ability. They took me to every good doctor in my native country, they took me to the neighboring countries and they brought me to the States for treatment. And by refusing the surgery meant disappointing them. It was going to crash all their dreams of having a hearing daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, and aunt. And this is the reason I had to think about it the hard way for hours and days. So yes, I wanted to hear again, to make my family proud of what they have done for me. To make them proud of themselves that they have finally achieved what they thought was best for me.

As you may be curious what a cochlear implant is, a Cochlear Implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuro-prosthetic device that assists people with severe or profound hearing loss. It bypasses the natural acoustics and replaces them with electric currents. The sound reaches to the brain electrically through the electrode array that is implanted near the brain. The CI electrode is placed inside the cochlea, then the receiver/stimulator is placed inside the head bone, the sound processor with the speech processor is magnetically connected to the receiver usually on left or right side of the skull. They all work together like the normal ears work.

While CI is the widely used implant, it also has many problems and negative aspects including but not limited to nerve damage that could lead to partially paralyzed body, nerve injury that changes your sense of taste, leaks of fluid around the brain, and the electrode array that is implanted inside the cochlea can become rusty and can cause pain. I had a friend in New York who suffers severe pain from it, he has to take medication several times a day. What scared me the most was that the doctor said the electrode array is only replaced when it is broken or becomes rusty but is never removed.

Hours had passed, and I was still laying there thinking. I thought about how hard it was to accept myself for being deaf after all the difficulties I have gone through. I told people I’m deaf but something inside me said. “No, this is just a temporary phase and you’ll be a hearing person again when the time comes,” and this became my soothing mantra. I thought about how hard it was to be deaf in Somalia, but then I realized that I’m not in Somalia anymore, I’m in the United States. I realized that DEAF is the identity that I have been denying for so long and it’s not temporary, it’s permanent. I realized that even with an artificial cochlea, I would still be deaf and that there was no point of denying it anymore. I thought about how much my life had changed since I came to the states. I already started school, summer jobs, made friends, learned technology, met deaf people who were very proud of themselves and I learned two new languages at the same time. The more languages I learned, the less difficult communication became. Therefore, I didn’t need to worry about getting an artificial cochlea at all. This doesn’t mean that I don’t struggle in life anymore; life is full of struggles, challenges and surprises. It means I learned how to live my life the way I want, to ignore negativity, and embrace positivity. I learned how to dream and pursue it. And most of all, I learned that my deafness doesn’t define who I am.

After a week had passed, I wrote a letter to my mother who was sitting in the living room—explaining why I didn’t want the surgery and informed her to cancel the appointment. My family was not happy with my decision at first and we had series of discussion, but they respected my decision. I felt a huge relief because the false hope of regaining my hearing was over for the first time in so many years. My head felt light because the worries and the fear of the CI was over. And so, my focus shifted to moving forward as a proud deaf person.