- Title: People First: Hear and Now
- Date: 23rd June 1994
- Summary: "Why should I learn to speak for the benefit of hearing people when hearing people don't bother to learn to sign language?" - BEN aged 12. This PEOPLE FIRST focuses on what it is like to be a deaf child in a hearing society. Ninety per cent of deaf children are born to hearing families - so just how does a child communicate with their family and the world around them? Twelve year old Ben is a deaf child in a deaf family. His mother says she sees her family as completely normal. It is only when she goes out to hearing families that she realises other people see them as deaf - and therefore separate. By contrast Philip, a child in a hearing family, went deaf at the age of three. At first his mother was devastated, but then she got to grips with learning the language and has gradually come to see his deafness "as not so much an obstacle as a stepping stone".. Philip now plays for his school football team at a top mainstream comprehensive in Haringey, London - the only deaf youngster to do so.
- Description:TWO DEAF CHILDREN LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE DISCOVER HOW SEPARATE THE DEAF AND HEARING WORLDS ARE.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:123 PRODUCTIONS
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:23/06/1994
- Rights:On Request
- Decade: 1990s