Politics of Deafness & Deaf in Politics
Erick Ketcham1 summarises definitions of Audism as follows:
- Audism (from Latin audire, and –ism, a system of practice, behavior, belief, or attitude) has been variously defined as:
1.) The belief that life without hearing is futile and miserable, that hearing loss is a tragedy and "the scourge of mankind," and that deaf people should struggle to be as much like hearing people as possible.
2.) The notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or behave in the matter of one who hears. (Zak 1996)
3.) An attitude based on pathological thinking, which results in a negative stigma toward anyone who does not hear; like racism, sexism, audism judges, labels, and limits individuals on the basis of whether a person hears and speaks. (Humphrey and Alcorn 1995: 85)
4.) The corporate institution for dealing with deaf people—dealing with them by making statements about them, authorizing views of them, describing them, teaching about them, governing where they go to school and, in some cases, where they live; in short, audism is the hearing way of dominating, restructuring, and exercising authority over the deaf community. It includes such professional people as administrators of schools for deaf children and of training programs for deaf adults, interpreters, and some audiologists, speech therapists, otologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, librarians, researchers, social workers, and hearing aid specialists. (Lane 1992: 43)
5.) Lack of providing proper accessibility for the deaf anywhere, the ignorance of, or the neglecting of doing their research and providing equal accessibility. For instance, providing wheelchair ramps, Braille on buttons, but not captioning, or interpreting for the deaf, or other such deaf-related accessibilities.
[Edit]References
- Erick Ketcham (2006), The Sandbox
(http://www.raa-deaf.org/sandbox1.html), last accessed on 26 October, 2007.
