Politically Correct? Um, no...

This is actually an old "inside joke" from last year, I think, but I figured I should document it for posterity.

There was an argument (for which I wasn't present) regarding the label "hard-of-hearing". Someone complained about referring to some kids as deaf and some as hard-of-hearing, saying we should just call them all deaf.

Besides the fact that some of the kids call themselves hard-of-hearing -- and I'm not about to tell them their self-identity is wrong -- sometimes we need to differentiate which kids we're talking about. Essentially, we need a way of referring to kids who have some level of reliance on spoken English.

Around school, I sometimes refer to them as "talkers". But when I heard about this argument, part of which being that hard-of-hearing has some kind of negative connotation, I started thinking about a more "accurate" label for such individuals.

What I came up with was SHATSAFASEs -- Students Having Access To Sound Adequate For Acquiring Spoken English. And yes, if you say it fast enough, it sounds like "shut your faces". :-X

Is that better, or can I please say hard-of-hearing when I need to refer to kids in a deaf school who hear enough to understand spoken English?