麻豆社

By Shiona McClafferty // 麻豆社 The Social contributor // 18 March 2021

I’m deaf and I get a lot of questions about it - like...a lot. So today I'm going to answer some of the things that people ask me about regularly.

I think this is the question I get asked the most. An accent is picked up through lipreading and tongue movements. I’m Scottish, I grew up in a Scottish household, my friends are Scottish, and I also had a Scottish speech therapist. So, of course, I naturally picked up a Scottish accent.

I also wear hearing aids that help me to hear more. But even without my hearing aids, I can tell when someone has an accent just by reading their lips. I also kind of wonder, what does no accent sound like? Like, everyone has an accent...I think? I don’t know anyone without an accent. I don’t know what it would sound like?

The truth is I actually don’t really know, I’m still learning this one. I try to think about how it feels.

I’ve learned that when I try harder to talk, it’s louder and when I talk more gently it’s quieter. But I’m studying at university and when I was on a placement, something I was always told to improve was my voice. I need to work on my tone, my pitch and my volume. It’s weird because people always tell me I speak really quietly, but I don’t get it because I try to speak at the same level as everyone else.

No matter how hard I try to shout, no one hears me. And I can’t explain that feeling, it just makes me feel really small. But it’s okay, I’m thinking maybe I can go back to speech therapy and work on it. It’s hard but I’ll get there.

I see a lot of people debating this in the comments of my videos. People seem to think that maybe I wasn’t because of my speech. But yes, I was born deaf.

I wasn’t diagnosed until I was three years old and that's when I got hearing aids.

So sign language is actually different in every country, just like spoken language it has developed differently in different communities. Just to make it complicated!

But there is a sign language called International Sign Language. It’s not used in a specific country but is learned by people around the world and then we can all communicate together. It’s pretty cool!

My mum and dad were concerned that I wasn’t speaking and asked our health visitor about it. She didn’t think that there was any problem and said that children learn to talk at different rates. My parents were told that it was a twin thing and that my brother was the dominant twin.

There was a visiting speech therapist at nursery who suggested that I had a hearing test which confirmed that I couldn’t hear. I had so many different hearing tests to find what the problem was. They thought that I might have glue ear and wanted to try grommets, but when I was at the hospital, I had a brain response hearing test and the doctor came out and told my dad that there was no point installing the grommets because I was “just deaf”.

The doctor told my dad that an appointment had been made to have my hearing aids fitted in two to three weeks, and that was it. I was three years old. I didn’t really understand what was happening. I don’t remember getting my hearing aids, they have just always been part of me.

As a lip-reader, the experience of going into an environment where everyone has a face mask on is scary, and sometimes lonely. Being deaf and trying to find your way around and get to know people is hard. There are already communication challenges and that’s expected, but face masks double those challenges.

I do appreciate when people make sure I can lip read them when they talk to me. I understand the importance of masks of course, but it does make things harder. There are clear face masks where you can see the person's mouth and I think they are useful for everyone, not just deaf people. I think a lot more of us rely on lip reading and facial expressions than we think. I’m telling you, clear face masks are the way forward.

I hope that answers some of you questions and you learned something new!