Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,164
- Reaction score
- 6
LIZ JONES: I'm deaf but that's no reason to treat me like a cloth-eared bint | Mail Online
I hate being deaf. Despite being disabled, I get absolutely no perks at all.
I’m not allowed to park anywhere near the entrance to a supermarket. And I don’t get to sit in the front row at concerts or the theatre (in fact, I have given up going to the theatre as I never hear a word anyone says – whatever happened to projection?).
All I get is rudeness, even though I tell everyone I encounter at the outset that I am very hard of hearing, so please bear with me.
Take my call on Friday afternoon to a firm called iVal, which has been designated to look after my claim with my household insurance provider, Santander.
A few weeks ago, my ten-month-old Apple MacBook Pro froze, so I took it to the Apple store at the Westfield shopping centre in West London.
The hip young gunslingers with iPads at the ready showed no interest when they learned I had a problem and was not buying the iPad 2.
(Incidentally, why has Apple, which has managed to come up with so many innovations, not introduced a first-come-first-served system in its stores? It’s totally random.)
Anyway, I left the laptop with them. A few days later, someone rang to say it could be repaired for about £800 but it might never be the same again, so I might as well buy a new one.
Which I did – for £1,400. I sent the repair sheet to Santander. Radio silence. Later, I called iVal, which is when my real problems started.
At the beginning of the call, I told the young woman I was hard of hearing. She proceeded to shout, telling me I would not be able to claim the cost of the new laptop, just the cost of the repair, minus the excess.
I told her there was no need to shout and that she should apologise for discriminating against a disabled person. She said: ‘I am not going to apologise for anything,’ and put the phone down.
I don’t know whether my hearing is getting worse, or the accents at the other end of the phone are getting more unintelligible – it is probably a little bit of both.
The problem is, when you are deaf and unable to see a person in order to lip-read, an accent becomes an extra, almost insurmountable hurdle.
Remote headsets, which most companies now use to avoid lawsuits for repetitive strain injury, are to a deaf person what a step is to a wheelchair user.
And while the subtitles on Sky TV are very good, those on Virgin Media are badly spelt and hopelessly ill-timed. The subtitles on iTunes don’t work at all, while the maximum volume setting is uselessly low.
I think there is a reason for the hostility I encounter on the phone to these banking and insurance call centres: because I keep saying I have no idea what they are saying, and could they please speak more clearly, they become offended because they clearly think their English is good enough to work in the services industry. It isn’t.
Being deaf leaves you permanently bewildered. Boarding announcements at ¬airports are just a noise. I can’t tell you how many flights I’ve missed because of mumbled messages.
While people with other disabilities seem to be met with sympathy, deaf people inspire open hostility.
I was in Africa recently with a really arrogant male photographer. I was finding our heavily accented, whispering African translator hard going, so I had to employ the services of an English aid worker, meaning there was a chain of three people to ask a poor starving mother each question.
‘I don’t see how you can do your job being so deaf,’ the photographer said to me. Actually, you moron, women respond to my disability in a way that makes us bond a little. I didn’t say to him: ‘Well, you are a large male among breast-feeding Muslims, so maybe you’re the person who is out of his depth.’
Of course, there are lots of indigenous people I cannot under¬stand. You would not believe the number of people out there who whisper. Why?
I am convinced the softly spoken are passive aggressive nightmares who want everyone to hang on their every word and act as if everything they say is of some confidential import.
Shall I tell you why deafness gets no truck, no special treatment, no politeness? It’s because it is seen as the disease of the old.
You are deemed to be batty and ignorable. A cloth-eared bint, to coin Basil Fawlty.
Will there be special races for the deaf at the Paralympics? I doubt it. We deaf are life’s ¬losers, always missing the good bits.
Always the last to know anything. Always being shouted at.
I hate being deaf. Despite being disabled, I get absolutely no perks at all.
I’m not allowed to park anywhere near the entrance to a supermarket. And I don’t get to sit in the front row at concerts or the theatre (in fact, I have given up going to the theatre as I never hear a word anyone says – whatever happened to projection?).
All I get is rudeness, even though I tell everyone I encounter at the outset that I am very hard of hearing, so please bear with me.
Take my call on Friday afternoon to a firm called iVal, which has been designated to look after my claim with my household insurance provider, Santander.
A few weeks ago, my ten-month-old Apple MacBook Pro froze, so I took it to the Apple store at the Westfield shopping centre in West London.
The hip young gunslingers with iPads at the ready showed no interest when they learned I had a problem and was not buying the iPad 2.
(Incidentally, why has Apple, which has managed to come up with so many innovations, not introduced a first-come-first-served system in its stores? It’s totally random.)
Anyway, I left the laptop with them. A few days later, someone rang to say it could be repaired for about £800 but it might never be the same again, so I might as well buy a new one.
Which I did – for £1,400. I sent the repair sheet to Santander. Radio silence. Later, I called iVal, which is when my real problems started.
At the beginning of the call, I told the young woman I was hard of hearing. She proceeded to shout, telling me I would not be able to claim the cost of the new laptop, just the cost of the repair, minus the excess.
I told her there was no need to shout and that she should apologise for discriminating against a disabled person. She said: ‘I am not going to apologise for anything,’ and put the phone down.
I don’t know whether my hearing is getting worse, or the accents at the other end of the phone are getting more unintelligible – it is probably a little bit of both.
The problem is, when you are deaf and unable to see a person in order to lip-read, an accent becomes an extra, almost insurmountable hurdle.
Remote headsets, which most companies now use to avoid lawsuits for repetitive strain injury, are to a deaf person what a step is to a wheelchair user.
And while the subtitles on Sky TV are very good, those on Virgin Media are badly spelt and hopelessly ill-timed. The subtitles on iTunes don’t work at all, while the maximum volume setting is uselessly low.
I think there is a reason for the hostility I encounter on the phone to these banking and insurance call centres: because I keep saying I have no idea what they are saying, and could they please speak more clearly, they become offended because they clearly think their English is good enough to work in the services industry. It isn’t.
Being deaf leaves you permanently bewildered. Boarding announcements at ¬airports are just a noise. I can’t tell you how many flights I’ve missed because of mumbled messages.
While people with other disabilities seem to be met with sympathy, deaf people inspire open hostility.
I was in Africa recently with a really arrogant male photographer. I was finding our heavily accented, whispering African translator hard going, so I had to employ the services of an English aid worker, meaning there was a chain of three people to ask a poor starving mother each question.
‘I don’t see how you can do your job being so deaf,’ the photographer said to me. Actually, you moron, women respond to my disability in a way that makes us bond a little. I didn’t say to him: ‘Well, you are a large male among breast-feeding Muslims, so maybe you’re the person who is out of his depth.’
Of course, there are lots of indigenous people I cannot under¬stand. You would not believe the number of people out there who whisper. Why?
I am convinced the softly spoken are passive aggressive nightmares who want everyone to hang on their every word and act as if everything they say is of some confidential import.
Shall I tell you why deafness gets no truck, no special treatment, no politeness? It’s because it is seen as the disease of the old.
You are deemed to be batty and ignorable. A cloth-eared bint, to coin Basil Fawlty.
Will there be special races for the deaf at the Paralympics? I doubt it. We deaf are life’s ¬losers, always missing the good bits.
Always the last to know anything. Always being shouted at.
Last edited:
