Analysis of quality of live in the deaf community from a blog

Abstract

According to the report presented by the National Institute of Statistics for 2008, there are 1,064,100 people with hearing impairment in Spain. This group is daily challenged by communication difficulties and isolation, which severely affects their participation in society leading them to perceive their quality of life as unsatisfactory. This community has traditionally gathered in associations as spaces where they are able to interact and find social support, thus creating a deaf culture. However, the advance of new technologies offers new and better prospects, since it bridges the difficulties posed by traditional space-time communication. The purpose of this study is to analyse the concerns, expressed in a deaf blog, of people with different degrees of hearing impairment from the perspective of quality of life. The sign language discourses contained in 44 video messages expressed in a Spanish public blog created by deaf people are analysed using qualitative methods. The results show general dissatisfaction with their quality of life, social exclusion, emotional discomfort and self-determination being the central topics around which the analysed discourses revolve.