NAD 2020 Vision: Corrective Lens Needed

NAD 2020 Vision is purely about the culturally deaf agenda and nothing more. They have consistently served most of their interest to the side of the culturally deaf community (estimated population 600,000) rather than the deaf and hard of hearing communities at large that make up 98% of all people with hearing loss (est. 35 million). NAD should be titled "NACD" or National Association of the Culturally Deaf because members and staff are culturally deaf.

None of their vision outlines the right of deaf and hard of hearing people to speech and sound. Although they do outline an objective to protect every individual's right to visual communication in the U.S. which can include captioning, Cued Speech, and even Signing in Exact English but that's just a guess because for all we know they probably only support the captioning part (i.e. real time captioning, CART, movie captioning, etc).

The Vision 2020 do not even acknowledge that there are educational programs that combine signing and speech. And what's more they blatantly left out the rights of parents to make an informed decision regarding their children with hearing loss whether it's bilateral or unilateral mild, moderate, severe  or profound hearing loss.

I'd say every child born with a hearing loss has a right to visual communication access which can mean Cued Speech, ASL, SEE, PSE, lipreading, captioning, etc. Just as well there are many children born with both hearing and visual loss that they should have a right to both visual and verbal/sound communication access as well. There are babies born with one of the condition and may gradually lose the other condition such as late deafened or late vision loss. So, in reality every individual's right is to both visual and verbal communication in the U.S. because frankly nobody is born with the exact same condition . NAD's 2020 Vision is purely a culturally deaf agenda promoting only one visual communication access, ASL, as the only acceptable language. There are visual and spoken language that every child born with a hearing loss should have access to. The rest is up to the parents to make an informed decision on what to do for their child.

NAD continues to play the game of political correctness to the whims of culturally deaf people and their ideals.

Capitalizing on what works

There's this fixation over the word "fix" when it comes to certain people with hearing loss, especially of those with greater hearing loss.  The word "fix" doesn't necessarily mean a permanent solution but rather a way to utilize a solution that best improve a condition. It's more of a correction and supplement to an existing condition rather than a "fix" per se but I understand exactly where people are coming from when they say that. Just as glasses helps fix poor eyesight or people with a variety of vision loss. You take off your glasses, you still can't see well. You take off your hearing aid or cochlear implant you cannot hear very well or none at all. It's utilizing what senses you have left by capitalizing the power of technology. Each of us has a hearing loss that is different ranging from mild to profound, bilateral or unilateral hearing loss. It's a fix, it's a correction but there is nothing permanent about it when comes to those adjustments being made. The question becomes whether people with hearing loss will capitalize on that or not. Some do. Some don't. Some won't. What works for me, works for me and has nothing to do with you. All we can do is respect the diversity out there. Not everybody signs. Not everybody can hear like the next person. We're all different. It doesn't matter if a person prefers to speak and listen, and don't know sign language, what matters is that we understand that diversity exists and we must respect that and the communication and language options for all those deaf and hard of hearing people out there. What works for me doesn't mean it will work for other people with hearing loss, deaf or hard of hearing with bilateral or unilateral hearing loss. What works for you doesn't mean it'll work for other people as well. I simply capitalize on what works for me.