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How My Hearing Loss Inspired My Tech Career By Brooke Wayne
Ever since I was young, I’ve been obsessed with getting complete information. Being born with bilateral profound hearing loss to two Deaf parents and having one hard of hearing sister meant a life of constant misunderstandings and questions. This lifelong pursuit for information would end up making me an expert in communication and lead to my career in technical writing.
Exploring Alternative Forms of Communication
This quest for information began as soon as I was born. My parents, who were also Deaf, had experienced so much adversity themselves. There was no hesitation in raising my sister and me in both the Deaf and hearing worlds if it meant better chances for success. As a result, I was given hearing aids as a newborn. Next, I had speech therapy sessions to learn how to hear, speak, and read lips. I was also encouraged to learn my parents’ primary language, American Sign Language (ASL), which certainly came in handy around the kitchen table. My parents made sure that we knew about cochlear implants (CI), a medical device that bypasses the damaged inner ear by simulating the auditory nerve directly to provide a greater range of hearing sensitivity. They left the decision of getting a CI up to us. Although I was happy with my hearing aids at the time, I changed my mind in my 20s and got one then. Suffice it to say, I had a lot of options to help me communicate with others. Despite all the tools and resources I had at hand, 32
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I was losing information every time it was verbally communicated to me—like water through a sieve. It was especially frustrating during school, and I loathed having to rely on others to fill in the gaps. Copying the smartest kid’s class notes wasn’t enough; their notes were a summarized version of the complete information they had heard. Using a frequency modulation (FM) system to make the noisy environment clearer was useless; I was too reliant on lipreading (speechreading), so no increase in sound and clarity would fill in the information gaps. It was no surprise that I preferred visual learning, and that evolved into a love of reading and writing. With all the information captured in words, I could read instead of fail to hear. Between closed captions on the TV and a neverending supply of books, my reading speed and vocabulary rapidly surpassed that of my peers. In the meantime, my appreciation for ASL as a visual language grew while I attempted to converse in sign with my parents, their Deaf friends, and a few Deaf friends of my own. This blended upbringing was incredibly valuable; it taught me that information could be conveyed in myriad ways, and each method had its own pros and cons. I found beauty and diversity in the written word, from Shakespeare to an argumentative essay and everything in between, but also in the body language and spatial awareness of sign language. I wouldn’t realize it until many years later, but seeking alternative forms of communication through writing and ASL shaped my versatility as a technical writer.
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