Hearing impaired or Deaf, which term do I use?

Honestly, the media makes it so much more confusing by continually switching up hearing impaired and Deaf—yes, they mean the same thing, but the term ‘hearing impaired’ has so much negative connotation.

The Deaf community encourages the use of “d/Deaf” instead of “hearing impaired” for so many reasons.

1. ‘Hearing impaired’ presses the idea that Deaf people are ‘impaired’ and needs to be fixed (usually with implants, surgery or other methods).

2. ‘Impaired’ gives people the idea of Deaf people having an inability to drive, to communicate or to function in daily tasks.

3. ‘Impaired’ suggests that hearing people should feel sorry for Deaf people that their hearing has been ‘impaired’.

Generally, when writing about Deaf people, the proper word to use is ‘Deaf’ or unless asked by the person you’re writing about to use other terminology, be sure to clarify that in your publication. Yes, there are some Deaf people in the Deaf community that prefers to be called hearing impaired, some people feel like it’s a positive term to them—but if your publication is addressed to the community/culture in general or a Deaf person you’re unsure which terminology you should be used, the safest way to go is to use the proper word, ‘Deaf’.

If you’ve been using ‘hearing impaired’, don’t worry—understand that this is a long process to change people’s terminology for Deaf people. When a Deaf person encourages you to edit the word out in your publication, do so without an argument but also, they embrace conversations about the ‘hearing impaired’ use versus ‘Deaf’. Feel free to tweet Visually Speaking your thoughts!