Today’s word is:

Audism

This is a form of discrimination that postulates, well to make is simple, persons who are Deaf or hard of hearing are inferior to those who are not.

A couple of examples:

• Deaf persons, 25 years ago, who went to a hospital ER, had to bring their hearing children to interpret into ASL the doctor’s prognosis. Nowadays, medical interpreters are easy to arrange.
• A house guest who cooks lavish meals at 3 in the morning, unperturbed, because the Deaf can’t hear or smell the cooking.
• Another classic example is talking to hearing impaired (I used that phrase on purpose) adult in the same way you’d talk to a child.
• “I’ll tell you later…”, “oh it’s not important…”, “deaf and dumb…”… oh my…
• These are all archaic, extremely rude audism statements. Do not repeat.

If you are Deaf or hard of hearing, and want to share your audism horror stories, please do!

Thank you for reading!