Of the about 6,000 children that are born each year in Luxembourg, about six are born deaf. All in all, it is estimated that there are about 300 deaf people living in Luxembourg.
Most of them communicate in the German sign language - a language that still isn't recognised in Luxembourg. However, this could be about to change.
Last year, a draft law demanding the recognition of German sign language was brought before parliament. This step would make life significantly easier for many deaf people in Luxembourg.
RTL spoke to Wagner family where parents Sandra and Michael are both deaf, but their daughters Sofia and Laura can hear. Apart from a couple of specialised aids, their day to day life is very similar to that of people with normal hearing.
They do sometimes need an interpreter, but only for more complex tasks such as a doctor's appointment. The greatest obstacle for Sandra and Michael is not the fact that only very few people "speak" and understand sign language - they usually manage to get the general message across - but the fact that many aspects of daily life in Luxembourg are in French.
Nine out of ten children born deaf today are given a so-called cochlear implant that helps them hear by transmitting sound into electrical impulses. This stimulates the auditory nerve in a way that it perceives these impulses as sound. The sooner these implants are given to children, the bigger the chance that their brains will learn to "read" or rather "hear" the signals that are being transmitted. For deaf adults who have never had use of their sense of hearing, a cochlear implant would make no sense, because they would no longer be able to learn how to interpret the electric impulses.
