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Just watched the video. That was awesome. Very moving.

r.c wrote:How is she able to understand and talk? Isn't she hearing the words for the first time?

She's not deaf in the complete deaf sense - she was 'clinically deaf' in that she had some hearing, but well below what is necessary for functioning hearing. She used hearing aids and similar devices for most of her life, which allowed her to learn how to speak etc, but hearing through hearing aids and being able to hear are two completely different things. It's like wondering why someone is impressed with seeing a sunset for the first time, when they've spent their whole life looking at a black and white picture of the sunset taken with a pinhole camera.

Also, not all deaf people have noticeable speech impediments, or any at all for some people.

DavidMcC wrote:... Therefore, perhaps the different reactions of the young woman and the little boy are because the young woman knew what it was like to hear, because she was not completely deaf, whereas the little boy had no idea what it was like until he was given the hearing aid. The young woman's joy was probably because of the ending of years of frustation, frustration possibly not felt by the little boy.

Maybe.. but I imagine it's more likely that the woman was experiencing pure joy at this amazing new sensation; hearing. Like I mentioned above, hearing aids can give you a vague impression of what hearing is like, and technically you are "hearing", but it's qualitatively nothing like actually hearing. She would never have heard what her own voice sounds like, for example, with hearing aids. She would have heard enough to differentiate words, but she would have no idea about pitch or timbre or anything like that.

John P. M. wrote:Strangely (to those of us who can hear anyway), there's been and is still a controversy over this in the 'deaf community'.
There's this weird thing going on there, with 'deaf culture' being "threatened". It's a whole world I was unaware of not too long ago. I know a girl who have gotten this type of implant, and I've seen her having to defend herself on a Facebook page for deaf people.

Yeah the girl in the video was attacked and harassed by the Deaf community because they feel that she was lying as she wasn't "really" deaf. Basically, for people like this girl, you are stuck in no man's land, where you aren't functional enough to fit in with the people who can hear, and you're not deaf enough to fit in with the people who have a whole culture with sign language, etc. Then when this girl makes a breakthrough and manages to finally fit in somewhere, the Deaf community attack her because she calls herself, and correctly so, 'deaf'.

It's very messed up and disgusting that parents could actively choose to let their kid be disabled when it is easily fixable, and just as bad when they attack others for not wanting to be disabled.