Cochlear implant user Bowen Tang spends time with hard of hearing (HoH) and deaf young people both at and off work. Turning 30 this year, Bowen’s day job is a Teacher for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing at Children’s Hearing & Speech Centre of British Columbia, Canada. He is also a co-founder of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association BC Youth Peer Support Program and the President of International Federation of Hard of Hearing Young People (IFHOHYP). He experienced both sides of privilege (and the lack thereof) growing up. Today, he believes the privileges he has received should not be extras but something that is available to all.
Born in HK, Moved to Canada
Bowen was born in Hong Kong in 1990. He was first identified with moderate hearing loss at age 2. He first wore hearing aids, which helped him hear sufficiently well then. He moved on to a mainstream primary school. Despite his decent progress, Bowen’s parents felt that the environment in Hong Kong then lacked the conditions and resources needed to help him flourish. They migrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1998.
Bowen Lost All His Residual Hearing One Morning
One morning in 2000, he woke up with no hearing at all. Hearing aids were no longer of help. He was later diagnosed with large vestibular aqueduct (LVA) syndrome, which eliminated his residual hearing. At age 10 in 2001, he got implanted on his left ear. It took him another three years to re-learn listening with a cochlear implant (CI). He has been relying on his left ear to do the listening work for both ears since then until re-wearing a hearing aid (HA) on the right ear in 2012, becoming bimodal (HA+CI). He received various kinds of support to help him navigate the challenges related to his hearing loss.
He Received Comprehensive Assistance
The Canadian health care system covers all his hearing equipment maintenance and upgrade costs. He received assistance from a teacher who specializes in helping school kids with hearing loss assigned by the government. He met the teacher one-to-one three times a week, 40 minutes each time, to ensure he was all caught up with his classes. He also had access to hearing assistive technology, like Roger pen, and services, like in-class captioning at university. Roger pen is a kind of FM (frequency modulation) device that helps one to focus on listening to the speaker by pointing the Roger pen to the speaker. It is like how the mic works, except that it streams the sound straight to your hearing device instead of magnifying it for everyone in the room.
HOH Community Is A Pillar to His Life
One more crucial source of support Bowen has received is a hard of hearing community. He might be the only kid with hearing loss in his classes. But meeting with other individuals with hearing loss of different age groups outside school has helped ward off feelings of isolation common to kids with hearing loss. This is what Bowen felt was missing in the larger society and is now dedicating his time to bring together individuals with hearing loss.
He co-founded the CHHA-BC Youth Peer Support Program in 2012 and is currently the president of IFHOHYP. These two groups organize events to bring individuals with hearing loss together on a regular basis. CHHA is based in Canada while IFHOHYP was first founded in Europe and is now seeking to expand to other regions. Bowen is now driving the IFHOHYP expansion to Africa, Asia, and South America. “They all boil down to one thing – bringing together a community,” Bowen said of what drives his active involvement with CHHA and IFHOHYP.
You could find more cochlear implant user stories here.
CI Project collects cochlear implant user stories. I’d like to invite you to join the private Facebook group. You’ll receive an update of each new story (about once a month) and will get to interact with the characters of each story there. I’m also looking for more cochlear implant user stories. I’d appreciate it if you could nominate a cochlear implant user (including yourself) for me to write a story about!
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