Deyanira Cubillo: Reflection on hearing disability

For the past few weeks, my group and I have been hard at work gathering information to educate and bring awareness not only to our class, but other students at Miami Dade College, about the realities of life for people living with different disabilities. We were designated to teach about different types of disabilities, as well as causes, treatments, and resources provided by Miami Dade college to aid people with disabilities. At the beginning of this project, my knowledge on disabilities was very slim and I believe that I still have a lot to learn. My group did an amazing job at collecting helpful and insightful information through the form of personal interviews and credible research sources. My group displayed the history of people with disabilities, institutions that help people with disabilities, and help shed some light on some common misconceptions about people with disabilities.

For this project, I was responsible for teaching the history of the hearing impaired, our current world’s perspective and also in charge of an interview . The knowledge I acquired during my research, which I will now try to pass on, came from different hearing impaired stories, research done by reliable resources, and studies that made it into mainstream media. The reality of hearing impairment  and its history is quite saddening, as millions of hearing impaired people don’t have the resources, or even the right, to learn and communicate with not only people who are not hearing impaired, but even with others with the same impediment. The earliest accounts of hearing impaired people in history were not positive by any means. They were looked at as the “less than” division of society and unteachable. It’s a terribly sad reality that millions of hearing impaired people all around the world are living that tragic truth to this day. 

history of the hearing impaired was an intriguing and tragic topic. Some of the prominent philosophers that we accredit for so many profound discoveries, such as Aristotle, were responsible for the belittling reputation that deaf people and the hearing impaired acquired in 350 B.C. Because Aristotle was just as prominent in history as he is now, his statement that labeled deaf people as “evidence of God’s anger” became the tragic perspective that society immediately adopted; and deaf and hearing impaired people were seen as an unfortunate subdivision of society that were not worthy of education for nearly 2000 years to follow.  

 for this project I had the pleasure to interview someone with hearing impairment. Stephanie is a young girl who lost her ability to hear due to a severe ear infection. Stephanie not only shared her struggles growing up, but also encourages those dealing with the same issues to not let their disabilities limit them. The interview with Stephanie went better than expected, we were both nervous and excited to be able to help bring awareness, this project allowed me to learn something new and gain a new friendship.Finally, I want to say great job to each one of the members of my group for the amazing job that they did gathering information. Being part of this group has been a pleasure. All team members were very helpful and responsible with their duties. This project was an enlightening experience and I hope that I will use the knowledge that I have learned. I also feel very grateful with all the assistance i got for my interview and without them my presentation would have not been the same.

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