2. How to communicate with deafness

Deafness is a major handicap on a daily basis.

It has the particularity that it handicaps not only the wearer but also his contact: communication is difficult to set up and it is therefore necessary to choose a means of communication.

Deafness involves making a choice between the use of sign language and oralization, which is done according to the family context.

In families of deaf parents we generally choose sign language, already used by the family environment, while in hearing families we choose spoken language. We tend to choose what we already know.

Sign language is recognized as a language in its own right. Words and expressions are expressed by hand, mouth and body movements. It allows deaf people to express themselves and communicate with each other and especially with those around them. The major drawback of this language is that it is not widespread in France outside of deaf communities (unlike the United States).

This makes communication difficult, because often deaf people have great difficulty speaking orally and are difficult to understand.

Indeed it is very difficult to speak when we can't hear ourselves. While sign language is easy to learn for toddlers when it is their mother tongue, learning as an adult is more difficult.

Today we consider that it takes 8 years to master this language well.

source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTuEg45iqU

LPC (spoken language supplemented) is a means for deaf people to receive the French language through the visual channel, as the hearing person receives it through hearing. The speaker's hand, placed near the face, completes the movement of the lips, thereby removing the ambiguity between several phonemes corresponding to the same movement of the lips.

Unlike sign language, it is not a language, but a code, a means of restoring all the phonemes of the French language.

source : https://images.app.goo.gl/oVBVSJzhKzPJfX7N8

It is most often used in hearing families with deaf children. Like LFS, LPC requires learning. However, it only takes a few hours to learn how to code phonemes ... and then it takes hours of practice to get a smooth code.

LPC is accompanied by movements of the mouth, which in deaf people develops understanding of lip reading, which can be useful when the person does not speak LPC. If the person articulates correctly and does not speak too quickly, the person who has developed this facility would be able to understand what the person opposite is saying to him. This use of the code can also help people in noisy environments.

Nevertheless if sign language and LPC make it possible to communicate visually, they do not offer a solution to hear !

It is very difficult to oralize without a phonetic audio loop, that is to say, getting along well.
The cochlear implant respond to this problem.