Touching on pornography

This is a long way off topic but it’s just a thought I would like to share to lighten the mood.

I recently saw that Braille pornography is being produced for the first time. Playboy have previously produced a Braille version of their magazines in which the pictures are normal but the text is in Braille (which oddly assumes that people buy the magazine for the text…). This new idea is to produce raised images that the blind person can feel and appreciate. The mind boggles. Thankfully I’m not blind and don’t need to wonder about the effectiveness of this tactile experience.

I’m not proposing that Playboy should produce a deaf edition (although I’d be interested to hear ideas for how this might work!). But this Braille porn thing got me wondering about sexual services for deaf people and whether we are being offered a rum deal:

• Are there any dating sites specifically for deaf or disabled people?
• Are there any deaf-aware prostitutes out there? Ones that can sign, shout, or don’t mind an interpreter being present in the room? Moreover, are there deaf prostitutes and, if so, what assistance do they get from Access To Work?
• Premium-rate phone lines: Are there any people on the far end who are trained to shout, e.g. “YES! YES! YES!” rather than “Yes! Yes! Yes!” or to use words that deaf people are likely to be able to hear? The cost of calling these numbers could be double that for a hearing person, depending on whether the deaf person keeps asking for repetition. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But “YES!”, “WHAT?”, “YES!”, “WHAT?”, “YES!”, “WHAT?”, “YES!”, “WHAT?”, “YES!”, “WHAT?”, “YES!”, “WHAT?”, “YES!”, “WHAT?” is getting a bit ridiculous, even for me.

Audiologists are an endangered species

The more I think about this, the more I realise that audiologists are the problem. They are blindly trying to do what is, frankly, an impossible job. When they admit to that fact and act upon it, we will start making real progress.

In the old analogue days, audiologists had just a few options at their disposal. They could choose the correct sort of hearing aid, make sure it was working (or at least doing something), and crudely adjust a couple of screws – usually to the minimum or maximum marks which means that for any hearing aid, there were only about four common programming permutations. With digital, the permutations are practically infinite.

So why’s the job impossible today? It’s impossible because the audiologist can never know exactly (or even approximately) what the patient is hearing, no matter how good the patient is with his or her verbal descriptions. Trying to describe a soundscape with words is like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with a broom. The deaf patient has to keep painting and repainting the soundscape with insufficient words to do the job. Leonardo didn’t paint by numbers so why should we have to?

What deaf people need is appropriate hearing aids, the equipment to configure them and, most importantly of all, training to use the software. If audiologists are to survive, I think that their role must change from demigod-chief-programmer status to one in which they act as trainers to deaf people. Just show us how to set up the software and what the different options are for… and then let us get on with it! Audiologists are still needed to supply and repair our hearing aids. They are still needed to support and guide us. And they are still needed to configure the hearing aids for people who, for whatever reason, cannot do the job themselves.

Audiologists are of course also wanted by those people who secretly enjoy having warm goo piped into their ears. :-)

My point is that audiologists are not needed in the current all-controlling role which is blighting countless lives. So, please evolve or go the way of the dinosaurs.

Now, where was I?

First of all, I must apologise for my absence just when things were starting to get a bit juicy. There are a few reasons why I haven’t been blogging and I suspect that readers can relate to them:

1. My personality type is not suited to blogging. I get really enthusiastic about things, persist for a while and then let them just fizzle out. To be a good blogger requires greater self-discipline and persistence than I have.
2. When I can’t hear well, I can think of nothing but how badly I can hear. It gets me down and I feel the need to get things off of my chest. When I can hear relatively easily, I appreciate it so much that I don’t spend every waking moment fretting about or dwelling on my deafness. In short, I have managed to improve my hearing aid programs and a huge weight has been eased off of my shoulders. Being released from prison probably feels much the same. I have been enjoying life so much that I have had little time for anything else.
3. So much happened in a short space of time concerning this project that I felt unable to document it in a logical sequence. I still can’t. So you will just get bits of the jigsaw puzzle here and there. You can assemble the puzzle yourself. I will try not to give you too many bits from some other jigsaw puzzle!

More posts are coming but here’s a brief summary of where I am up to:

• I spent something like 75 hours programming my hearing aids. It was a trial and error process as I learned my way around the software. There were highs and lows – progress was in both directions.
• My hearing is far better now than it has been over the last five years. My head is not in a bucket anymore. I am enjoying music and birdsong all over again. I can’t tell you quite how great that feels.
• I have a great sense of empowerment, liberation and freedom; at last I have some control over my situation.
• I’m more convinced than ever that do-it-yourself programming is the right way to go. I fully intend to make sure that I can continue programming my hearing aids into the future.
• The job still isn’t done. Programming is surprisingly exhausting and I need a break in which to gather the strength to make further adjustments.
• As well as the hardware and software, you also need to have an experimental attitude and patience. Buckets of it.
• If you’re thinking about trying to program your own hearing aids, stop wasting time! Do it! I sincerely wish that I had bought the gear five years ago and I wholeheartedly recommend the approach. It might not work for you but that’s a risk that’s probably worth taking.