An ear in both worlds

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 27th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: bridging the gap between people who can hear and people who can’t.

Just over 1 in 10 of all Americans are considered deaf. Some were born that way, others have lost their hearing along the way. A cochlear implant can help. It’s a small electrical device that bypasses damage in the ear. It works like a transmitter, sending auditory signals straight to the brain.

BROWN: Getting the device doesn’t make someone un-deaf, if I can say it that way. It’s just a tool for someone in the deaf world to navigate the hearing world. It often takes someone with a foot in both worlds to bridge the gap between them. Someone like Renee d’Offay in Australia. WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis has the story.

RENEE D'OFFAY: The hospital did introduce me to someone else that had been in a similar situation that was hearing and then that lost their hearing and had a Cochlear.

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: This is Renee d’Offay. D’Offay lost her hearing and her balance at age 18 after a bout of meningococcal meningitis. Her life—and her world—had suddenly changed. A few months later, she got her first cochlear implant, the one she calls Tiny. When doctors switched it on for the first time, she heard her father first.

D’OFFAY: And he sounded like Daffy Duck. It was really mechanical. And technical, I guess. But then everyone sounded the same, because I was looking at these people I’ve known all my life. And they didn’t sound like, you know, what I remembered.

It can take up to a year after cochlear surgery to re-learn how to hear. It’s like getting a new sense because of how different it is from the sound most people experience.

David Grayden works in medical bionics. That means he finds human-built solutions for nervous system issues like immobility, deafness, and blindness. He works at the University of Melbourne.

DAVID GRAYDEN: There are sort of around about 3000 different receptors in the cochlea and each of them picks up a slightly different frequency. And so ideally what we would want is 3000 different stimulators to replicate that. But at the moment, the, the Australian cochlear implant has 22 stimulators.

It’s kind of like a grainy picture where you can’t quite make out the details. A cochlear implant allows its user to speak and understand speech. But it’s a less-than-perfect replacement for hearing.

GRAYDEN: So just need to keep in mind that just because a person with an implant may be able to converse well with you. There are certain times or certain situations where they will struggle.

Renee d’Offay already had her cochlear implant when she first met the man who would become her husband. They soon faced a hurdle.

D’OFFAY: My batteries went flat, and I didn't have any others. And when I did replace my batteries, he's like, Oh, maybe I need to learn sign language. And that was it. Like he started learning the next term.

Some people see the implant as undermining the deaf culture: It adds sound to a community that relies solely on sight.

Colin and Eva Bevan celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year. Eva is deaf.

COLIN BEVAN: Because hearing people rely on hearing and everything in our culture's. Nearly everything is on sound. Whereas in their culture, everything is on sight, There is not 1%, no percent of their culture is on sound.

Before d’Offay learned sign language herself, she knew she didn’t fit neatly into the deaf or the hearing worlds.

D’OFFAY: I kind of felt like I was on, like, outside of the hearing world. But I also didn't know anything about the Deaf world. And I always now picture it and feel like a Venn diagram. And being in the middle of that, whereas before, I felt like I just was like, you know, out of it, didn't know anything.

Australian Sign Language is often called Auslan. It uses two hands to form each letter for fingerspelling. That’s different from the single-handed American Sign Language—or ASL.

Colin Bevan signs for his 72-year-old wife Eva. Eva has been deaf since she was 6 weeks old. She knows nine different sign languages. And they’re all truly different.

BEVAN: There’s nothing’s the same. Almost nearly nothing's the same. ‘I love you’ is a fairly universal sign.

Renee d’Offay wants to bring the deaf and hearing worlds together. Sign language is one way to bridge the gap. And that’s why d’Offay spends her days teaching both hearing and deaf people how to sign. She’s leveraging her position in the middle of the Venn diagram to everyone’s advantage.

D’OFFAY: I also, like feel really passionate about bringing together the community that's there.

She organizes family fun days where people can get to know other families. They can share ideas, commiserate, and build community. Melissa Garrett and her family have been learning sign language with d’Offay for a year and a half. Garrett’s son Jimmy has a cochlear implant.

AMY: So why are you here today?

MELISSA GARRETT: Because we want to get more involved in the Deaf community. And luckily, we've been able to do that through Renee. Prior to that, we didn't know how to connect.

SOUND: [Parents talking under noise of children about trying son’s hearing aids.]

GARRETT: Jimmy was diagnosed eight years ago. So it would have been wonderful to have gotten in earlier. If only I knew Renee earlier I would have grabbed on with both arms back then.

Eva Bevan notices that cliques form within the deaf community. They’re based on communication-preference. It grieves her even more to see the divide between hearing and deaf people. Her husband Colin interprets for her.

BEVAN: Why do we have to be separate? The deaf and the hearing? We can all learn and we can learn to be to come together. Yeah. We don't have to be separate groups. Yeah, for many years, I've seen that. She said.

But that’s not the end of the story. D’Offay’s own meeting with another cochlear recipient gave her confidence. She wants to provide the same support to others navigating their new position between two worlds.

SOUND: [Have you met Ty? Say hi to Ty. Rosa, she’s in there.]

Yasmin Nelson is the hearing mother of Tyrone, who is deaf. His situation has given her more than she expected a little red-headed boy ever could.

YASMIN NELSON: A new language. A new culture. A new extended family really, because we didn't have anything to do with hard of hearing people before, so and now we have a whole new world that’s opened up to us.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Geelong, Australia.

BROWN: To read more about Renee d’Offay and the deaf community in Australia, look for the May 6th edition of WORLD Magazine.

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