Charlie Swinbourne: 10 things you should never say to a deaf person

“Wow – I would never have guessed that you’re deaf!”

What would have made me fit your stereotype of being deaf?

A badge?

Flashing hazard lights on each ear?

Me standing motionless as a samba band play drums just yards behind me?

“You’ve got really good speech for a deaf person!”

Er… thanks. But that suggests that in your view, some deaf people have ‘bad’ speech. Which is a very loaded thing indeed.

(I’m always tempted to respond: “and you have mediocre speech for a hearing person,” but I’ve never quite gathered the courage to actually say it.)

Both these first two points also subtly imply that seeming less obviously deaf is a good thing and something to be complimented on. Which I don’t quite have the time to unpick here…

“But I find subtitles annoying.”

We find you annoying, stubborn hearing person who hogs the remote and refuses to turn the subtitles on.

How about we make a deal? You turn the subtitles off, and we turn the volume right down? Then neither of us will understand the TV programme we’re watching.

And you’ll finally get it.

“Can we knock on your door if there’s a fire?”

Ok, hotel reception person. Three reasons I’m scared I might die in your hotel if there’s a blaze:

1: your shift finishes at midnight and I’m not sure you’ll remember to tell your replacement that there’s a deaf person on floor 11 who won’t hear the fire alarm.

2: even if you or your replacement do remember me, you might not make it upstairs in time.

3: most importantly of all, I won’t hear you knocking.

So how about a rope ladder so I can make my escape? A parachute?

Or just investing in a buzzer system so we can be independently aware in an emergency, like all your other customers?

“I can’t always hear everything in here either!”

Maybe you think it’s helpful to reply that I’m not alone in struggling to hear everything in this busy office.

Maybe you think you’re being supportive.

But I’m not talking about occasionally missing something.

I’m talking about struggling to hear all the time in this echoey space where someone is always barking on the phone and people constantly forget to look at you when they’re speaking. I’m also talking about getting pretty exhausted as a result.

And although you had good intentions, you’ve just put me off getting as far as telling you about feeling left out of nearly everything that’s going on at this company – and pretty isolated, too.

So, thanks. But acting like we’re in the same boat, and everything’s actually okay, when you aren’t deaf yourself, minimises my experience and isn’t actually helpful.

At all.

(Apologies for the lack of humour, this one got a bit real as I wrote it.)

“We’ve got a braile menu you can use?”

It’s great you’ve got one… but you’re confusing deaf and blind people as being the same.

Let’s hope you’re not also using BSL to sign the menu choices to our visually impaired friends…

“But you usually hear me?”

How much we do and don’t hear is variable, not optional. And it takes a lot of hidden work.

Sometimes it depends on how well we know you, whether there’s external noise in the room, whether we can see your lips (to lipread) or just whether we’re knackered or not.

It’s not a failing of yours – although we really wish you didn’t mumble so much and think you could trim that ‘tache – but it’s not a failing of ours, either.

So don’t try and make us explain. And don’t expect an apology for making you repeat yourself once in a while.

“Oh,  I noticed you had problems.”

I don’t see my deafness as a problem. Do you? Why?

Might be worth checking out the social model of disability…

“So you’re deaf and dumb?”

We’re deaf. Not dumb. The same also applies to the phrase ‘deaf-mute.’

If you want to use descriptions like these, just go back to the 70s and make a good life for yourself there, where you can use all kinds of out-of-date, offensive ways of describing people of all types, with abandon.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Probably the worst thing you could ever say to us. Because it makes us feel like, maybe, we don’t matter too much either. Wise up people, and repeat yourselves.

See also: “I’ll tell you later.” (No-one has ever told me later. Ever.)

Even if what you were saying was as boring as: “I’m feeling a bit peckish. I might have a yoghurt.”

That might be the spark for a fantastic conversation about fromage frais.

And we wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would we?

Charlie Swinbourne is the editor of Limping Chicken, as well as being a journalist and award-winning scriptwriter. He writes for the Guardian and BBC Online, and as a scriptwriter, penned My Song, Coming Out and Four Deaf Yorkshiremen.