The Resolute Communicator

Well, I’ll just… I always…I never do this… I…

Because I never write and talk at the same time because I rely so much on looking at the other person who is talking, I never take notes during that.

So it’s a little hard for me to…

So, I have…I do have a lot of online meetings.

And since I rely on lip reading, there is this, there’s always this slight lag when someone is talking.

So the lip reading doesn’t really match up.

So in that case I have to rely a lot on captions in fact, which are not super accurate to be honest.

So, there might, there’s lot of times when I have to repeat, I have to have them repeated

And I try to avoid online meetings as much as I can.

Hi, I’m Sukanya and I’m deaf.

My deafness is hereditary.

I wasn’t born deaf, I was born hearing and I slowly went deaf over time, so it’s progressive.

When I started losing my hearing, it was pretty mild but now I have lost it completely.

I’m profoundly deaf now.

In fact, my dad also had hearing loss, so did my aunt.

But I was the first person in my family to get hearing aids.

So only, once when I got hearing aids…

A couple of years after I got hearing aids, it became more normalized in my family to get hearing aids.

My dad got them well into his 40s.

My aunt got them well into her 50s, and here we are now.

So, the way I hear is very different from the way most hearing people will hear.

You just have to listen with your ears.

I listen with my ears, my face, my eyes.

So I can hear some things, I can hear bits and pieces of words with my hearing aids, maybe a word here and there.

The rest I rely on lip reading.

But lip reading isn’t an exact science so, because a lot of words do look similar on your lips.

So, apart from that I also look at your facial expressions.

Your facial expressions tell me, are you angry? Are you making a joke? Are you saying something serious?

Your body language also tells me that.

Apart from that, this maybe gives me about 50-60% of what you’re saying.

I also rely on context.

You know those reference to the context exercise you do in class.

That helped me out so much here because whatever I don’t hear or I can’t make out from your facial expression and body language, I just fill in the blanks from there.

It takes time to process.

So if you switch the topic of the conversation in the middle, since I’m still processing the last thing that you said, I don’t quite catch the new thing that you said.

So, I require people to be patient with me and I require them to be near me and facing me when they’re talking.

Don’t cover your face, don’t look down. I know that it comes very naturally to a lot of people to move around and all, when they talk, especially covering their lips when they talk.
But if you do that with me it means I’m missing out on so much that you’re saying.

I can’t really follow that conversation.

After I found out I was deaf, there were lots of times when I told my dad that I want to learn Sign Language.

And he would, he always told me, ‘Okay, let’s ask the audiologist, let’s talk to the ENT and see what they have to say’, because he would always listen to what the medical professional say, what the rehabilitation professional say.

And all of them said, ‘no, don’t let her. Because if she learns Sign Language, then she will stop trying to hear and she will stop trying to talk. So eventually she might even stop talking altogether because she might find that more convenient for her’.

So, there were lots of times, even though I wanted to learn, I was stopped.

So, I have done my BSc in Human Development with an emphasis on Child Development and I have done my B.Ed. in Special Education in Multiple Disabilities.

I was a special educator for quite a few years in fact, before I started my own companies.

So I started Enabl.care to provide therapies for people and children with disabilities to do away with all the issues with rehabilitation that we have.

Unfortunately it did not pan out that well, so it’s on pause right now.

After that I joined my husband’s company lovemarriage.app as the head of Special marriages and a head matchmaker.

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So, my advice to teachers who have a deaf student in their class would be,
If you have to write something on the board and you’re saying something, please turn around and repeat it.
I would say, try not to walk around. In fact, don’t do it. Make sure that you’re facing the student when you speak.

And always, the best thing to do if you have a deaf student or someone with any kind of hearing losses, make sure they’re seated right in front of you.

Either you go up to them, or have them pull their desk forward to be closer to you because they need a clear view of your face and they need to be within a hearing distance which is much shorter than that for students who are not deaf.

So if you have these three things done, and of course there’s lots of time that they might miss out on words anyway.

So if they ask you to repeat and you see that they constantly are asking you to repeat a certain word, it means that no matter how many times you say it the chances are they will not understand.

In that case, just write it down.

It just takes a few seconds.