- Oh, good to see you again.
(eerie piano music)
When it comes to those who have limited
or no ability to hear,
there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings that exist.
The great thing is that there are more and more services
that are popping up out there
that benefit those people, such as Rev.com,
who provides captions for videos just like this,
who's also sponsoring this video.
So, today, I'm going to be tackling
the five biggest myths and misconceptions
that you might have about deaf people.
And, trust me, if you've ever wondered these things,
you're not alone.
(muffled talking)
Here are five misconceptions about deaf people.
Number one is that sign language is universal.
Just like spoken languages,
sign language is different in other countries,
meaning an individual who learned how to sign
in the United States
more than likely uses different gestures
than someone who learned in China.
Sign language is always developing
within each deaf community, meaning it's possible
that two people living just a few miles away from each other
could actually have two completely different ways
to sign a word or phrase.
Number two is all deaf people can lipread.
Deaf people have to adapt in order to communicate.
However, there's a common misconception
that people can somehow read lips
shortly after becoming deaf.
Reading lips, like many other skills,
takes a lot of practice, and even experienced lipreaders
get things wrong a lot of the time.
It's been estimated that on average,
more than 40% of each sentence is lost
and the reader must interpret what was said
based on whatever they could make out of it.
Number three is being deaf means you cannot hear at all.
The word deaf is vastly misunderstood,
with many people believing that to be deaf
is to retain no ability to hear at all.
But that is simply not the case.
Hearing loss varies from person to person,
and even someone who has a partial hearing impairment
may call themselves deaf.
A person can be considered legally deaf
when they have little hearing ability
and rely on visual means of communication over auditory,
but that obviously doesn't mean
that they can't hear anything at all.
Number four is deaf people can't enjoy music.
It might seem odd to you or even impossible
to think that the hearing impaired can appreciate music,
but it's true.
Even totally deaf people can enjoy music through the beat,
feeling the vibrations that speakers and instruments create.
In November of 2001,
a study was released by Dr. Dean Shibata,
which revealed that the experiences that deaf people have
when feeling the vibrations of music being played
closely resembles those by others
that could actually hear it.
Seriously, the body's an amazing tool!
And number five is it's not safe for deaf people to drive.
Just because a person can't hear
doesn't mean that they can't be just as safe
behind the wheel of a car as those who can.
Some have special devices which give a visual signal
when loud noises such as sirens occur outside,
while others simply rely on seeing the flashing lights
of emergency vehicles or cars pulling over.
Studies have shown that on average,
hearing-impaired individuals have as many
if not fewer car accidents than those that can hear.
In fact, research suggests that deaf people
may possess better peripheral vision.
So, there you go, myths tackled.
Huge thanks to Rev.com for sponsoring this video.
In fact, Rev is actually the service
that I've been using for years,
and they're the ones who caption
every single one of my videos.
If you're interested in captioning your content,
which you definitely should, go to Rev.com/matt
or just go to the link in the description of this video
for a $10 coupon for first-time customers,
good for closed captions or transcription services.
They use humans, not software, to do the captions,
so they're 99% accurate,
versus, of course, YouTube automated captions,
which many people call craptions for obvious reasons.
90% of their freelancers
are based in the United States and Canada,
with the remaining
being in other English-speaking countries.
It's a dollar a minute, simple pricing,
so a 10-minute file equals $10.
They even have a less-than-24-hour turnaround time
for files under 60 minutes.
I promise you're going to love it.
So, go to Rev.com/matt right now.
And one final time,
thank you to Rev for sponsoring this video.
I will see you guys next time, have a fantastic day.
Buh-bye now!