Few years ago, when there was a lot of bad blood between Deaf identity adherents and the medical establishment over the subject of cochlear implants, I sometimes used the following E-mail signature:
I am the Cochlear Corporation of the Borg. All resistance is futile. Deaf Culture is irrelevant. YOU SHALL BE IMPLANTED.
Now it seems that the real Cochlear Corporation, which is based in Australia, considers all human languages – spoken or signed – to be irrelevant, unless they are spoken English. The news item in question did not clarify the status of American English, which has several differences from Australian English.
More about the bad blood:
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Author: Omer Zak
I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels.
Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks.
I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.
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