Talk:Hearing impairment

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[edit] NPOV Dispute

I've chosen this page to post the NPOV notice because the terms "deaf" and "deafness" are Redirected here, making this article completely non-neutral.

Issue under debate: This is an issue about the use of a Redirect that points the search term "deaf" or "deafness" to the Hearing Impairment article. I believe the redirect should be to a disambiguation page for both terms. The Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial show a good example of the problem we are encountering under the heading "Word ownership". The words "deaf" and "deafness" have senses of their meaning that have a history of conflict dating to the 18th century. Therefore, Wikipedia should strive, at the very least, to neutralize the conflict over word ownership; an objective that can be achieved by using an appropriate disambiguation page.

Under the present redirect, no search using "deaf" or "deafness" as the search term will produce a referral to the articles that address deaf culture or deafness as a cultural identity. They will only go to Hearing impairment. It has been argued by Jfdwolff, who initiated these redirects, that deaf or deafness as a cultural identity is "fringe" language of a small minority and thus does not merit a redirect to a disambiguation page. He has also vowed not to permit "deaf" or "deafness" to become associated with culturally deaf identity, I presume, because he believes deaf culture to be too farfetched. I defer to him to correct my depiction of his argument. He is an experienced and highly valued contributor to Wikipedia, a proven scholar and a person I seek to emulate, and I regret that I must disagree with his choices on this issue, but I do. My reasons are not trivial. I argue that deaf cultural identity is not fringe or farfetched at at all and I have sought to prove my argument by using a Google search as proof. This is not the only proof I have, but I believe it may suffice to demonstrate an important point. On three consecutive days, when I used the single search term "deaf" (nothing else) in a Google search, the majority of the Google referrals were directed to web sites that present the culture sense of deafness and deaf people. You are invited to try yourself.

Google Search-Top Referrals: Results from January 17, 2005:

1. National Association of the Deaf (NAD): Founded in 1880, this is the primary and principle organization that espouses the culturally deaf model of deafness in the United States. It has state-level organizations in all 50 states and chapters in the major cities of each state.

2. The Deaf Resource Library: Most, if not all, of the content addresses the Culturally deaf model of deafness.

3. RNID: According to their mission statement: they are an advocacy organization that supports the linguistic rights of the United Kingdom's deaf community.

4. British Deaf Association: The sister organization of the USA's NAD (see #1, above). United Kingdom's leading culturally deaf organization.

5. Dogs for the Deaf. Inc.: Trains dogs to assist deaf people. Matches deaf people with a trained dog. Philosophically neutral.

6. British Deaf Association: Same as #4, but with an alternate URL.

7. American Society for Deaf Children: One of the major parent's groups that espouses the use of signed communication and encourages deaf community. Espouses the cultural model of deafness.

8. Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf: Professional interpreters have long-standing membership in and ties to the deaf community. It is virtually unimaginable that any member of this organization or profession does not advocate the culturally deaf model. They make their living in the very midst of the culturally deaf community.

9. Alexander Graham Bell Assn.: Not associated with deaf culture because of it's exclusive emphasis on speech education and the use of medical technology as adaptations to deafness.

10. DeafNation.com: The deaf community's version of popular culture. Embraces cultural deaf identity.

  • Summary: The referrals on Google are directed to sites that are virtually dominated by the cultural view of deafness. The Top 10 referrals in a Goggle search are a formidable example of just exactly what sense of "deaf" and "deafness" Google users are seeking since these pages represent the most-linked-to sites under that single search term. Therefore, "deaf" and "deafness" represent a social view of deaf identity that, to confine it to "hearing impairment" would not serve the needs of Wikipedia readers seeking the major references on the cultural sense of the terms. To add referrals of the cultural sense to the Hearing Impairment article would be to invite enormous ideological conflict. Therefore, the solution seems to be the employment of an appropriate disambiguation page.
  • Suggested Solution: A disambiguation page would solve this problem. Presently there is a disambiguation page, deaf individual, that attempts to render a solution, yet conflict over this issue has made that page an orphan. The solution is to change the title of deaf individual to "deaf" then redirect both "deaf" and "deafness" to it. The page could then be styled in the manner of the disambiguation page argument or another appropriate disambiguation page to direct readers to the "sense" of the term "deaf" or "deafness" they are seeking. This will do a great service to all articles that address the various models of deafness by fostering respect for competing senses of these words.

In my experience in writing and debating these issues, the problems arise over the concern for balance. Biased people, as Wikipedia points out, are concerned that articles do not reflect their own bias enough. But for culturally deaf people there is far worse problem: some people will not accept the premise of a cultural model of deafness. Wikipedia articles do not ask readers to accept this premise. Nor does Wikipedia seek to prevent readers from having access to articles that describe those who do espouse a cultural model of deafness. Yet access to the search terms "deaf" and "deafness" is the precise problem in this case. I ask for your comments so that we can move to a Wiki-appropriate resolution. Ray Foster 10:49, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for this opening gambit, Ray. I will try to explain my position.
Deafness starts with a phychical problem, which is the inability of oscillatory waves reaching the cochlea and the brain stem nuclei, making the person with this problem unable (or less able) to perceive auditory information. This has various consequences: a degree of exclusion from social interaction and the perception that the Deaf must subscribe to a different social reality. This has little to do with models of deafness but more with the psychological, social and cultural consequences of being hearing impaired.
I do not doubt the existence or point of Deaf culture. I do take issue with your battle for the primacy of "Deaf culture" related material on Wikipedia. I do believe they are "fringe". Your worry about NPOV is totally unfounded - deaf is an adjective (or is used most of the time as such whenever another Wikipedia article links to it).
You are extremely biased when "grouping" the above ten links into categories, as if their Google rank "proves" the veracity of the "culturally deaf" argument. I'm listing this discussion on Requests For Comment, because at the moment we seem to be the only ones talking. JFW | T@lk 12:48, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I appreciate your candid comments and your willingness to invite other contributors to comment. Your understanding of the dispute resolution process is an invaluable asset and will help me understand the overall nature of achieving articles that better approach an NPOV. It is a mischaracterization of the dispute to say that a disambiguation page will be used to "emphasize the cultural impact and relevance of deafness" as you've done on the Requests For Comment page. At the moment I can only imagine, perhaps, one sense of the words "deaf" or "deafness" that will be a referral to an appropriate article. Deaf culture is the article that comes my mind. I should also say that I'm not founding my argument on the Google results alone. I'm using those results as a point of departure. If you, or anyone, do the same search on Google you will see that I didn't "arrange" the results. Those 10 items were the top ten results and in that exact order. That means that thousands of web pages link to those sites as sources of information on the term "deaf". That's the thing that gives validity to my suggestion. One can use "deaf" on Google to find information about deaf culture there, but it's not possible to do the same thing on a Wikipedia search. I am biased only in favor of disambiguating the term so that readers can use Wikipedia in the same way they can use Google to do research. Thanks, once again, for contributing to the discussion. Ray Foster 13:47, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Since you used the capitalized "Deaf" in your remarks to emphasize a point, it will be useful to explain that the identifying word "deaf" is rarely used in ordinary signed conversation with the capitalized "D". The term "deaf" (the sign, not the written word) is used as a noun in the ordinary sense of someone using the word "father" in the sentence, "I'm a father." There is an erroneous explanation of when the capitalized "D" is used in the Deaf culture article and it is overly emphasized in the deaf individual disambiguation page. I have plans to correct it, but I'd like to focus on the present debate for now. "Deaf" is used in the context of asserting deaf identify with emphasis. An analogy would be, for example, the way a Frenchman might assert his national allegiance by saying, "I am French!" in the heat of a political discussion. In sign language the signer articulates the alphabetic letter "D" than emphatically signs "deaf" to achieve the equivalent of the Frenchman's emphasis. Alternately, a signer will simply sign "deaf" with exaggerated emphasis with no capital "D" necessary. But these examples of "Deaf" are reserved for emotional charged moments and not in the course of everyday expression. The emphasized form of "deaf" (lower case) can be expressed in writing merely by following it with an exclamation point. "I'm deaf!," for example Ray Foster 17:07, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Dispute: More arguments favoring redirection to a disambig page

We follow the "principle of least astonishment" — after following a redirect, the readers's first question is likely to be: "hang on ... I wanted to read about "this". Why has the link taken me to "that"?". Presently many instances of the term "deaf" are wiki-linked on several articles. If a reader is pursuing the subject of deaf culture and history and they click on a wiki-linked "deaf" it takes them to an article that is outside the scope of study. A disambiguation page will aid in the goal of least astonishment.

This guideline refers to deleting a redirect but it is relevent to what our problem our present redirect configuration causes.

"You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met: 1. The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine." This is the present situation. Again, a redirect to a disambiguation page would solve the problem. Readers will be able to find the sense of the term "deaf" they want. Ray Foster 08:28, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm coming here from the Requests for Comment page. I don't completely understand the finer points y'all are discussing above, but from my point-of-view as someone with little familiarity with deaf issues: to me, 'deaf' and 'hearing impaired' are synonymous, and both refer directly to an inability to hear. I recognize there are social and historical issues beyond the simple definition - but I would expect them to have their own articles, linked from the 'deafness' article (maybe even as "see also" at the top of the article). If I click 'deaf' I expect to go to an article on hearing impairment, not to a page asking me what I mean by 'deaf'. - Brian Kendig 16:39, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for comment (see All of the above)

Thanks, Brian. You've provided another angle on the problem; that being, if you use "deaf" or "deafness" as the search term you'll never know that there are a growing number of articles that address deafness from cultural, linguistic or historic perspectives. There are also perspectives from evolutionary anthropology that are quite interesting. Then there are the historic religious views that played a profound role in representing the spiritual significance of deafness. Literature and art abounds with depictions of the deaf and are two fields of endeavor in which deaf people excelled. Presently, you'll only find a perspective on deafness from the single perspective of medical science when you use the term "deaf" or "deafness" as a search term. No contributor can hope, or even attempt, to build a collection of major references to the diverse world of the deaf experience when it is a certainty that any search will only result in "Hearing impairment". In essense, the present redirect deliberately seeks to limit deafness to a single perspective. What benefit that redirect provides to Wikipedia can only be left to the imagination since its function is block access to other perspectives. Try using "deaf" as the search term on a Google search and see if you are limited to discussions of hearing impairment among the 8,120,000 referrals returned. The libraries at Gallaudet, Yale, Harvard and Oxford and their collections on deaf history and culture are rendered impotent since all their works are collected under the term "deaf" or "deafness" which, on Wikipedia, only point to one article. That's the problem. I thank you for your valuable input. Ray Foster 22:52, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, that kinda twists what I was saying. Yes, I didn't know there are a "growing number of articles that address deafness from cultural, linguistic or historic perspectives" - when I click on the word "deaf" I expect to go to an article about hearing impairment. If these cultural, linguistic, or historic perspectives are part of the issues surrounding hearing impairment, then I expect them to be covered by the article I am brought to, or linked from it. Hearing impairment is the main issue here; the perspectives are sub-issues. For example, if I click on Microsoft I don't expect to be brought to a disambig page asking "do you want to know about the company, the products, or Mac vs. Windows wars?" Another example: click on Disney and you're brought not to a disambig page, but to a page which informs you about the most all-encompassing Disney topic and provides explanations for links to sub-articles. So, in short, I think it would make the most sense if "deaf" and "deafness" and "hearing impairment" all go to the same article... and, if you need to emphasize perspectives on deafness, make sure the article emphasizes them. I don't see how this "blocks access to other perspectives" in any way, and your phrasing it that way makes me wonder if maybe you're not approaching this question objectively? Just an observation from an uninvolved observer. - Brian Kendig 03:19, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Brian. I probably should have said that your comments shed light on another problem. I didn't mean to change the meaning of your comments but rather to draw more meaning from them, even though you may not have intended to imply more or other meanings. I appreciate your feedback. Ray Foster 07:28, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Glad to help, if I did! By the way - the article is a good one, covering the topic simply and in more detail than I even knew existed. Nice work on it. - Brian Kendig 14:51, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I agree. It's a fine article, but the credit goes to Jfdwolff and not me. Ray Foster 20:32, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)


Hi, I was looking for deaf as in deaf culture (and I was not smart enough to type "culture" in the search) and was kinda dissapointed by the long medical article because I don't need it. I spent time looking for links to deaf culture resources there but there is none. Although I guess some people look for the medical stuff, so a short summary article with links to in-depth culture, medical and what not articles may be a good solution? Just my 2 cents.

Another good thing about such a page would be to have all relevant links together. When I was looking for "bicycling" they have this type of page but deaf links are all over (or I just don't know how to look?).zima3000

I'm in favour of pointing out the existence of deaf culture in the article intro. That should be adequate. JFW | T@lk 01:41, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I was going to create a disambiguation page, but instead, I moved the link to the deaf culture page up to the top of the hearing impairment page since I read on the talk page that Jfdwolff would not stand for a disambiguation page (glad I checked). I have seen countless examples of that kind of link at the top of a page when persons are likely to be searching for two or more kinds of information but would be using the same keyword to find it. Jfdwolf came behind me and put the link to deaf culture back to the bottom, as the very last thing, in the introduction. Jfdwolf, you have consistently argued passionately against the creation of a disambiguation page which seems to me to be the best path to take. I am happy that you have allowed the link to culture appear in the intro but it is not fair to further insist that the link be buried at the bottom of the intro paragraph. If you are going to be inflexible about the creation of a disambiguation page, why can you not allow that the link be near the top of the article so that people who are NOT looking for what you think is the only appropriate article to be shown when one conducts a search using the keyword word deaf can easily find the info they want. You have strong feelings about what a search using the word deaf must only be permitted to lead to. Since this is the case you need to make sure people who are looking for the information that would go on a disambiguation page can easily find what they are looking for without having to just trust that there will be a link for deaf culture buried under a long string of text that caters solely to the pathological sense of the word. Why not allow, as is done on countless other pages, plain and easy to see links to subjects that are the possible target of an inquiry at the outset of the article? Either that, or please change your mind about your total ban on a disambiguation page for the keyword deaf. Qaz

Qaz, what you want is a Template:dablink at the top. I don't think that is what we need. I'm not banning disambiguation pages. I simply think that the reader is more served with the present solution. In the present form, someone looking for Deaf culture will find this without a problem. Since when is deafness not used in the pathological sense? Do you mean it is actually normal? JFW | T@lk 21:14, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, this is fine now. JFW | T@lk 07:46, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)


I agree, it is better now. To answer your earlier question to me (Qaz) when you asked, since when is deafness not used in the pathological sense? Do you mean it is actually normal? The answer is that I was talking about the word deaf being used in another sense from the frame of reference you are most used to. Being a medical doctor, it is not surprising that the pathological sense of the word is the first way it would occur to you to see the issue. However, just because there are two senses used does not always imply that one is the opposite of the other. I do not mean that deaf people are medically "normal". Deafness is not the usual state of humanity. To use the word deaf from a cultural perspective is a totally different lens with which to view the issue. No matter what your position about which came first, or what is the consequence of what, millions of people use the word deaf in the cultural sense. This is why the Google search results, which were mentioned earlier on this talk page and which you just brushed aside as not being relevant, are important. We should not decide what information people should be looking for when they use some word or another as a search term. You have asserted, rightly perhaps, that people are putting the cart before the horse by looking for information about the culture instead of the medical condition when using the keyword deaf. The fact of the matter is that some people are interested in the cart, and some are interested in the horse, and they both tend to use the word deaf as a search keyword. It does not matter which lens your or I value more highly since wikipedia is not here to be proscriptive but just to help people to find the information they are looking for. As an aside, and to help you see people who look for cultural information as less of a "fringe group" as I have seen you describe them, consider that I have read in more than one place that the number of college students in the United States who take classes in sign language will soon, or has already, surpassed the number taking Spanish classes. In most, if not all, of these sign language classes, students are encouraged to think of someone who is deaf not as someone who is broken or as someone who has some kind of impairment. Many deaf consider themselves simply as a regular, normal people who happen to use a different language than the mainstream population. They feel they have full and rewarding lives and are part of a thriving and longstanding culture. Since you had medical training, you tend to see the issue though the pathological lens. I am not trying to assert that that is not a valid way to see the issue. The pathological perspective of the deaf is logical, internally consistent and valid. I am simply asserting that there is another approach which is gaining popularity if the exposure sign language and deaf culture are receiving in classrooms; commercial advertisements, entertainment and educational media, and academic debates are any indication. In light of all this, I really feel that the word deaf should lead to a disambiguation page that gives people the opportunity to go to the medical sense or the cultural sense so that it does not appear that we are enforcing any value judegement about which is the proper perspective. Qaz


(removed the following and placed it here on the talk page because it was written as a personal comment and so belongs here) Being deaf is being part of a culture. It’s similar to being a member of a Korean or Hispanic community that has not been fully incorporated into American life. These communities generally retain their native language for use at home or when doing things together, and the deaf community has every right to retain the use of ASL rather than assimilate into the hearing world. Choclear Implants are difficult to accept, in my opinion, because they take an entire culture’s makeup into question. -tt260801@ohio.edu

[edit] Disambiguating "deaf"

I removed the "other meanings of deaf" notice since it was no longer needed since deaf is no longer a redirect to hearing impairment. If others feel that it is essential for some reason, put it back. Qaz 00:23, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I put it there expecting deaf (disambigation) to become the disambiguator for all similar terms. Unfortunately, the Wiki crashed before I could arrange for this. JFW | T@lk 10:00, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] another meaning of hearing impairment

Interesting discussion and good to see cool tempers on both sides of a potentially explosive issue. I hope my post is read with an open mind!

I'll begin with an anecdote: I recently introduced a hearing friend to two other friends - one who describes herself as hearing impaired and the other who calls himself deaf. Both immediately understood each other's meaning, but the hearing friend was somewhat confused. Suppose he looks up 'hearing impairment' on wikipedia to gain a better understanding of the term....?

In my experience in the deaf community in Australia and other English-speaking countries, the term hearing impaired is often contrasted to the term deaf to indicate the particular individual's attitude to their deafness.

Hearing impaired can indicate that the person sees themselves as disabled and may communicate with speech, lipreading and with use of hearing aids in preference to sign language. They may be late late-deafened or orally educated.

Deaf can indicate that the individual sees themself as part of the deaf community (often emphatically not disabled but rather a member of a cultural minority), and uses sign-language as their preferred language.

In this sense it is really a descriptor of one's cultural allegiance.

I propose that this meaning of "hearing impaired" is at least acknowledged in this article; perhaps in it's own section with a heading, eg:

TERMINOLOGY

The term Hearing impaired is often contrasted to the term Deaf to indicate two different models of understanding hearing loss. Hearing impaired is a medical understanding of deafness as a disability, whereas people who identify as deaf (especially with a capital D) may not see themselves as having a disabililty, but rather as members of a 'cultural minority' associated with sign language (see Deaf culture).--ntennis 08:34, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I just read the Talk:Deaf page. Ouch. I'll make my contribution to the debate on that page - but as I came here first I still think it's worth to indicate this more narrow meaning of 'hearing impaired' somewhere in the body of the article (not 'see also'!) :)
Perhaps in order to avoid JFW's concern that a deafness page has undue attention placed on 'deaf culture', it might be worth pointing out some statistics, eg. "a small but significant minority of people with hearing impairments consider themselves part of a Deaf community - in the USA it numbers around 3% of people with significant hearing loss. These are mostly individuals who were born deaf or became deaf at an early age". BTW I made up the 3% figure - we'd need to research it! I do think it's worth pointing out in this page the very different needs of the two groups. eg. literacy issues.
Another aside - as the barriers (to integration in mainstream society) faced by deaf people are mentioned in the first paragraph, I wonder if it wouldn't be worth mentioning that it's particularly one's inability to hear/interpret intelligible speech that places one on the other side of the barrier. eg. a very low or high frequency hearing loss wouldn't greatly impact on a person socially; furthermore, some deaf people (at least a few that I know!) in fact are hearing very loud sound input, but it's too distorted to interpret as speech, or speech is 'drowned out' by loud tinnitus.
Please also forgive my sloppy use of the phrase 'hearing loss' and good luck to all in achieving a synthesis of these different perspectives. --ntennis 09:41, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merging 'Deaf' page with 'Hearing impairment'?

These comments have been copied from the [Talk:Deaf] page as they are relevant to both. Sorry it's long but I don't want to make changes without agreement by the interested parties.

Currently, if you type 'deafness' in the Wikipedia search box, you are re-directed to the 'Hearing impairment' page. If you type 'deaf' you are taken another page with statistics about deafness, a reference to the deaf community, and other meanings of 'deaf'. The two pages have very different information. It seems to me 'deaf' and 'deafness' should redirect to the same page!

On some level it looks like what's going on with these two pages is territorialism, with two different models of deafness competing over terminology - a medical perspective and a social or cultural one (see discussion above and on Talk:Deaf). However, if you look at the best pages on wikipedia, the different meanings or categories of the term used as the page name are outlined at the start of the page; there's a general overview, and the different areas of interest branch off from there.

If you look at the 'Hearing impairment' page (also 'Deafness'), the opening paragraph is almost exclusively about treatment and rehabilitation - in fact everything after the first sentence.

I would rather see something like what is on the 'deaf' page (with some improvements) move to become the first paragraph of the 'Hearing impairment' page, and the information here about treatment moved under a heading like 'Treatment/rehabilitation'. I think that page should be named 'Deafness' or 'Deafness/Hearing impairment'. The opening paragraph should be an overview of what deafness IS, not just how to treat it. Please see this site for one approach to the kind of thing I have in mind.

Here's a quote from the page I just gave the link to:

DEAFNESS - While deafness is a hearing impairment, someone who is deaf is not usually described as having a hearing impairment. A person who has a total hearing loss is described as being deaf. The key difference in the common use of the terminology is that someone who has a hearing impairment, has a mild or moderate hearing loss, and a person who is deaf has either no hearing or has a severe hearing loss.

As someone immersed in Deaf culture, I'm strongly in favor of a reference to the deaf community and sign language in the opening paragraph of the 'deafness' page. However I think we need to remember that the number of signing deaf are a tiny proportion of the total number of people with hearing impairments (eg. in australia, there was an estimated 750,000 people with a hearing loss (5% of total population) in 1986 - current research puts the number of sign language users at about 6,500 [1]. The proportion may be greater in other countries but you can do the maths. Also ref. this site. Other estimates put the Deaf Community at 0.1% of a general population.

Yet despite small numbers, the Deaf community offers important insights into a number of fields of knowlege that should ensure its mention in the page 'Deafness', somewhere prominent. Eg. Nicaraguan Sign Language is at the core of the investigation into the nature of language. The Deaf community's challenge to widely believed notions of 'normal' and 'disabled' are forcing many other fields of knowledge (eg. sociology, anthropology) to question their frameworks. Also, the 'public face' of deafness in some ways includes sign language (eg. films about deafness like Children of a Lesser God); it's prominent in the general public's mind. All this should be a part of a page about deafness.

Hope you're still with me :)

Alternatively (though I prefer the first option), we could expand the 'Deaf' page a lot, explain the way the term 'Hearing Impaired' is used differently from the word 'Deaf', and put a link to the 'Hearing impaired' page in the opening paragraph. The 'Hearing impaired' page would then have to do something similar referencing the 'Deaf' page. The 'Deaf page would be renamed as 'Deafness'.

So I would really like to see a response from others who have contributed to this page and the ongoing debate. Anyone who wants to have a private discussion or chat online is welcome to contact me on my talk page. As the discussion is inseperable from the hearing impairment page, I guess i'll copy these comments there as well. --ntennis ntennis 02:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Hard-of-hearing

Whatever your POV problems are with "deaf", etc. the paras for (1) "hard-of-hearing", (2) "post-lingual hearing impairment", (3) "progressive hearing loss", and (4) "unilateral hearing loss", should not have been separated into four differnent articles. They surely are integral to the same problem. I have redirected "hard-of-hearing" as it belongs to the article of "hearing impairment". As it stood the article and its lost bits is now in a bit of a mess. (1) is back, but (2), (3), and (4) need doing. I have left the "see also" links for (2), (3), and 4) in, so they can be referred to easily.Dieter Simon 00:32, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Slight correction, I should have said "progressive hearing loss" is a broken or non-existing link.
My contention is that in an encyclopedia, those who don't know the subject, should be able to read through all the aspects of a subject in a main article which leads them through one para after another. How would they be able to refer to "post-lingual hearing impairment" if they have never heard the phrase in first place, or "unilateral hearing loss", come to that. In a main article they can refer to a para by consulting the contents box. Why not make it easy for them? Dieter Simon 00:49, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
Please dont re-integrate all the articles into one big mess. Practically nothing in the Hearing impairment article applies to all of the above classes of deafness. For example, "causes", "how to communicate", "Views of treatments" are all completely different for 1-4. The articles (1-4) themselves are obviously lacking, but putting them all together just makes a big mess of vagueness. Have a search on google for any of 1-4 that you've mentioned and you can see it is possible to create informative articles about the seperate topics. It just hasn't been done on wikipedia yet. Putting everyone on one page makes a mess and does not make it easier for anyone. Please dont integrate the articles all again. Rearranging the articles will not correct the lack of content. --Pengo 03:16, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


Pengo, you have a perfectly good contents box in this article which allows you to click on each para. Just imagine someone who wants to find out about the various aspects of "hearing impairment". You have created stub paragraphs to link to separate articles, "hard-of-hearing", "pre-lingual" and "post-lingual hearing impairment", however as far as you are concerned, justice is done by creating all these separate articles. By the time you have a paragraph in one article you might as well complete it with all the details rather than put a bit here and a another bit into another article? What we should be doing is to clean up the paragraphs so that they lead naturally from one part to another rather than create separate articles all over the place. That is how we would get rid of the "big mess".
Who is an encyclopaedia for normally? Not for experts on the subject, who already know all there is to be known about it and who also have their own specialised literature, but for the layperson, the person who doesn't know the first thing about a subject.
How on earth will they know about pre-lingual and post-lingual hearing impairment, by googling hundreds of articles? I don't think so, that is what an encyclopaedia is supposed to relieve them of. And then they have to go to these various places and try to combine the various sub-articles in their head. You see hearing impairment is hearing impairment to the layperson. Yes, he does want to know about "causes", and "how to communicate" and the various "treatments", but he wants to find them all in one place, not hunt around for each bit separately. That's why he has come to our Wiki in first place. You call it "one big mess", but consider how much more of a mess to the non-expert it would mean if we are forcing him/her to find all these different websites outside and separate articles within Wikipedia to connect up what is to them specialist knowledge.
As far as the "Hard-of-hearing" article you have cut and pasted is concerned, you haven't added any new content or detail, in fact you removed all the details from their original paragraphe to justify the separated article having more detail. What is the point of that? Dieter Simon 23:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
I dont really care enough to argue these points over again. But here I go again anyway. The person reading wikipedia might find pre-lingual hearing impairment from an article on someone who is pre-lingually deaf, and then they probably dont want to know about monaural hearing impairment (or they could find it by following a link from the more specific article). And if you click "deaf" on Beethoven you probably want to know about late onset hearing impairment, and not about moral issues surrounding cochlear implants. (Have a look at what links to the various deafness articles). The main article on hearing impairment should cover all these things and lead readers onto more full articles about the specific types of hearing impairment. However, i've made these arguments before and again, I really dont care enough to continue. Please, do as you please, but please try to add content instead of just talk and re-arrangement. I admit I've been completely guilty of it myself, as have many others who have touched this page and related ones. The specific articles on types of hearing impairment are only stubs at best, so obviously my vision for complete articles on specific types of deafness falls down. The main article is too big to be kept in tact, but too small to be seperated out. Again, do what you please, but merely rearranging content isn't helping any one. I wont argue any more. Enjoy your editing. --Pengo 09:31, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I understand what you are saying, Pengo, about arguing, etc., I feel the same way, but want to add a couple of things, since it was me who brought this whole thing up in first place.
If some people, as you say, don't want to know about particular aspects but are interested in others, can't they just consult the contents box and click on what they want to know, or what seems to them of of more interest. Isn't that what these boxes at the beginning of the article are for and what they do so in an admirable way?
And talking about "more specific or more complete articles", aren't they more complete mainly because of the fact that the extra content or detail in the separate article is there because it has been removed from the original paragraph, as happened in the case of the "hard-of-hearing" para and article?
Ok, I shall if and when I have a bit of time spare, go through this "mess", perhaps, with you and make a more appealing article of it? Dieter Simon 23:50, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
The contents box helps, but scrolling/reading through the article should be possible too. For example the list in Unilateral hearing loss would just add a whole lot of content that hardly seems relevant to the general topic of Hearing impairment. The main issue I'd have with joining it all into one article is that, for example, Halle Berry should be able to link to Unilateral hearing loss instead of into one giant article. Anyway, have a go at editing the article. See how you go. It's wikipedia, be bold. Go for it. --Pengo 09:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I see your point. You could carry on ad infinitum, and as you say and add a list of all the well-known people suffering from one sort or another of hearing impairments. But somewhere along the line one has to call a halt. However, that applies to all articles in encyclopaedias. I think what should be essential is that in "hearing impairments", all types of hearing impairment should make an appearance, if for no other reason than to differentiate easily between and another type of impairment, which isn't always straightforward when you try to compare one separate article with another. I found that so in the air raid shelter article, you just knuckle down and bring all the different types as sub-headings into one article, if it is to make any sense at all. That way it gives you a nice continuous reading chronologically as well as thematically. Dieter Simon 00:31, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, certainly all types of hearing impairment should be covered in the main article. Air raid shelter works well with the amount of info it has on each type of shelter, but as a counter examples see Bicycle or Ecology for examples of articles where many sections spill over into their own articles. --Pengo 03:18, 24 July 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Long term exposure levels.

I have read in anumber of places (inc RNID fact sheet) that long term exposure at 85dBSPL does minimum damage to hearing. THis page says 70dB. Or is it 85 dB for 8 hours a day? Could someone comment on this please? 8-)--Light current 15:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Most damaging frequencies

Many health warnings advise that higher frequencies are more damaging to hearing. This implies that lower frequencies are less damaging. So what is the difference between high and low frequencies limits in dB? Also anyone know how low frequencies are defined in this context?? 8-|--Light current 15:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Hmm... I'm not sure, I did a quick look around for it but all I got for my sporadic efforts was that higher frequencies tend to be higher pitched (makes sense I guess most people tend to grimace at higher pitched noise than lower) [2] but nothing about the DB limits for the different frequencies, surprising since if it's going to be mentioned they should really go into it... If it's not answered by the weekend I'll do some proper research into it. RBlowes 18:27, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deficits

Is this the right word here? Or should it be 'deficiencies' (or 'defects') 8-?--Light current 16:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sources

OK, I myself am hearing impaired, and I am sorta dismayed to see a lack of proper citations on this article. In a few days I plan to remedy this. I will list sources here, if anyone has problems and or questions let me know. This article really should have a chance at becoming a WP:FA. I will grab the appropriate citation data when I do the proper {{cite}} (Cite.php) format. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 08:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

  1. http://www.oafccd.com/factshee/fact59.htm

Ok, I stopped looking for sources until I know what the scope of this article is. Is this for humans, or for all creatures. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 21:57, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expanding intro

Alright, I am just going to expand the intro, and effect a total rewrite on this article. If anyone has problems with my changes, please undo just those changes and not everything, thanks.—— Eagle (ask me for help) 23:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Things I took out for now are in Talk:Hearing impairment/removed material. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 23:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Wow, that's too much to study at once. First problem I notice is in line 1: why change "perceive" to "detect"? There are certainly hearing impairments that affect your perception of sound, music, speech, etc., more than they affect your detection thresholds. Should we be construing hearing impairment this narrowly? Here's a book with a much broader definition. Dicklyon 01:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amplitude, frequency, pitch, etc.

This recently added couple of sentences has a lot of problems:

Sound waves vary in amplitude and in frequency. Amplitude is the sound waves highest point of oscillation. Frequency is the speed of sound divided by the wavelength of the sound wave, which is referred to as the pitch of the sound. Therefore losing the ability to detect some frequencies, or very soft sounds, that an organism naturally detects, creates some form of hearing impairment.

There's really nothing here that's meaningful or useful. For one thing, pitch is not frequency; for another, this is very backward way to define frequency; and the definition of amplitude as it stands is both too narrow and vacuous. But mainly, the idea that sound waves can be described by amplitude and frequency is itself very limiting and not at all general; it's really only applicable to the way hearing is tested with sine waves. The old lead that didn't try to get into this slippery area was better, but then the next section had similar problems. The final sentence seems to have the causality backwards; hearing impairment leads to increased detection thresholds for sinusoids; hearing impairment is NOT a RESULT of loss of ability to detect certain frequencies (that's a symptom, not a cause). I think we should just remove it from the lead, and work on getting things right as they come up. Dicklyon 02:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prevention

A "Prevention" section of sorts would be great. Jack Daw 19:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

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