Deafening review: Is the condition a ‘gift’, a hindrance or something more complex?

Early in Deafening (RTÉ One, Thursday, 10.15pm), an elegantly composed documentary about being deaf in Ireland, the RTÉ news and weather presenter Sarah-Jane Moloney O'Regan describes a fascinating dilemma.

While attending an IVF clinic in Spain she is given the option of removing the deaf gene, guaranteeing her children hearing. O’Regan, understandably, wanted the best for her children, but she hesitates to say what is best. Deafness is a way of life. “If I’m honest,” she says, “I wanted them born hearing.” In the end she and her husband decided not to remove the gene. “It’s a huge part of who I am,” she says.

The way we regard deafness has changed with advances in society and in technology, the programme recognises, following three families at a time when options, in treatment and in life, are expanding. In an early gesture towards augmentation O’Regan introduces herself with her own voice, to say, “This isn’t who I am,” then switches to sign language, as a cheery voiceover translates for her and text appears beside her. “This is me,” she says. Pleased to meet you.

Composed from intimate snapshots, Garry Keane’s programme is as much a documentary about choices, big and small; about how to live and how to see. It is cheering to meet Seán Herlihy, a teacher at Holy Family School for the Deaf, in north Dublin, who says that being deaf is a gift. The programme collaborates with him, in slow-motion muted sequences, to present deafness as a kind of serenity, watching him glide noiselessly along busy motorways and through crowded airports.

Occasionally, when Herlihy’s ebullience and O’Regan’s positivity meet the enthusiasm of their voiceover artists – “Life would be so much easier if everyone was deaf” – the programme begins to feel like a glib advertisement for silence.

A more pragmatic balance comes from two Waterford teenagers, Matthew and Jade Visser, who received cochlear implants in their infancy, took speech therapy early, and have been brought up between the deaf and hearing worlds with something like dual citizenship. They describe the effort of reconciling two customs.

The programme would prefer to avoid the blare of argument, though. Both gene targeting and cochlear implants can be contentious issues among the deaf community, but controversies are not indulged here. Instead Deafening wishes, laudably, to communicate the texture of experience.

For similar reasons, as some people dismiss the word “disability” and others use it freely, the programme manoeuvres gently between perspectives. On one point, however, everyone agrees: they want their children to live without fear. There the programme is subtly encouraging, showing a world of fewer impediments and broadening choices, from busy classrooms to tae kwon do tournaments, TV studios to animated family dinners. The kids are all right.