A special moment with the hearing impaired...
Some hearing impaired participants filling a form at the entrance “People living with deafness are not disabled. The difference between us and them is that they have a special language that we do not understand”. These were the words of Mr Kodwo J.A. Boateng, the founder of House of Grace School for the Deaf when I had the opportunity to interview him in my first write-up on the hearing-impaired. Although my engagement with some hearing impaired pupils has given me a reason to accept this assertion, my participation in a conference for the hearing impaired at the University of Ghana, Legon, last Saturday cemented my change of perception about the hearing-impaired. The conference Organised by the Department of Linguistics of the University of Ghana (UG) in collaboration with the Centre for Linguistics of Leiden University in the Netherlands, the conference discussed language acquisition and socialisation among the hearing impaired in Africa and other parts of the wo...