Liam O’Dell: We need to strike the right balance this World Hearing Day – here’s why

Posted on March 3, 2021 by



What could have been a great day for deaf awareness has instead become rather… icky. World Hearing Day, founded by the World Health Organisation (WHO), aims to “raise awareness on how to prevent deafness and hearing loss and promote ear and hearing care across the world”.

Of course, people must be encouraged to protect their hearing as much as they can, but how can this be done without presenting deafness as this terrible, devastating condition (which, for many deaf people, isn’t the case at all)?

First and foremost, I should make clear that I said ‘many’ because for some, deafness can be a pretty big shock to the system, and may not be viewed with the same level of unabashed optimism I give to my own deaf identity. Hell, I was incredibly emotional when I got told I may benefit from hearing aids when I was a teenager.

Yet one can be sympathetic to this view, encourage hearing protection and champion the needs of deaf and hard of hearing people. These three things can and must co-exist, and there is a fine line across all of them.

As I write this on Tuesday, I think of a press release I was sent earlier from the RNID, who call on supporters to “help fund more research to help protect sound”. The charity had also previously co-produced guidance with the Royal College of General Practitioners, in which they borrow a phrase from the WHO and write about “disabling hearing loss”.

I wrote about this in a thread on Twitter, but I don’t see my deafness as “disabling”. I align myself with the social model of disability, meaning that it’s society’s barriers which disable me, rather than my conditions.

Labelling deafness as a “disabling hearing loss” could very well lead to some people viewing it as responsible for an inaccessible environment, when it’s actually as a result of society’s infrastructure, attitudes and behaviours.

Such a view from a deaf person could cause significant damage to a person’s confidence and independence around their deaf identity. People shouldn’t direct negativity towards themselves and their condition; they should direct it towards society’s barriers.

This is also similar to how we view hearing protection. Let us reframe the narrative to look at the specific things which can contribute to someone losing their hearing, rather than using deafness as this horrible fate which befalls anyone who doesn’t take it seriously. Focus on wearing earplugs or ear defenders at concerts and not playing music too loud, for example.

I would argue, however, that you should definitely mention tinnitus as a danger when talking about protecting your hearing. While there are so many incredible benefits that can come from being deaf (not least the beautiful language and community) there is nothing admirable about living with a permanent ringing in your ear which can rob you of a good night’s sleep. Trust me, I live with it.

Then again, with tinnitus often coming with a diagnosis of deafness too, it may well be hard to separate the two. It’s tricky to warn against developing tinnitus and just how debilitating it can be, when it regularly comes hand-in-hand with a diagnosis of deafness.

So, much like the push to change International Day of Persons with Disabilities to International Disabled Person’s Day, we may now need to push for World Hearing Day to focus solely on hearing protection, without talk of deafness.

It’ll be tricky, what with deafness being at the other end of the hearing binary, but World Hearing Day is not the right day for us to be talking about deaf awareness. We have a whole week in May for that.

Photo: Ollie Cole.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.


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