BY STEPHANIE HAGAN
STAFF WRITER
THE CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
A bill changing the term “hearing impaired” in the Code of Virginia passed unanimously in a Senate committee meeting on Thursday.
Stafford County Republican Del. Bob Thomas introduced the bill, HB 2137, which passed with a 15-0 vote.
The bill would replace the term “hearing impaired” and its variations with “deaf or hard of hearing” and “hearing loss” in the Code of Virginia. The bill would also rename the Virginia Hearing Impairment Identification Monitoring System to the Virginia Hearing Loss Identification and Monitoring System.
Although this bill will not enact a policy change, it will make the language in the code more inclusive for the deaf and hard of hearing community.
“There’s a nationwide campaign to try to eliminate the words ‘hearing impaired,’ and essentially, the reason for that push is the word impaired has a negative connotation to it,” Thomas said.
The deaf and hard of hearing community find it offensive because the term focuses on what they don’t have, Thomas said.
Bonnie O’Leary, outreach manager at Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (NVRC), said she believes the bill will have a positive impact.
“‘Hearing impaired’ is viewed negatively in our community and has been for decades,” O’Leary said in an email. “On a personal level, I cringe when someone refers to me as ‘hearing impaired.’ I have a hearing loss, it’s as simple as that. Or I am hard of hearing.”
Eric Raff, deputy director of the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said he thinks the deaf and hard of hearing community finds HB 2137 culturally sensitive.
“Long ago, society labeled the deaf community as deaf mute or they used deaf dumb, and you know those terms are outdated now,” Raff said.
Raff said he could see the term “hearing impaired” being phased out in favor of a more appropriate vocab just as deaf mute and deaf dumb were.
“It will take time, but we will see that change come about,” he said.
Although the bill passed unanimously in the House with a 99-0 vote and passed unanimously in the Senate committee, there was some concern over its inclusiveness in the Senate Committee on Education and Health last week.
Sen. Janet Howell questioned whether the bill had any pushback at the committee meeting on Feb. 7.
“The people that I know and care about in the hearing impaired community believe that being called deaf is an insult,” Howell said.
The Senate committee let the bill pass for the day so they could give advocacy groups time to weigh-in.
At the committee meeting on Feb.14, Thomas reported he had a letter of endorsement from the Virginia Association of the Deaf, and Howell received support from the Alexander Graham Bell Foundation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Virginia would become the sixth state to change the term if the bill goes all the way through.
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