EVA Carlton* can speak three languages. She has a diploma in childcare and education and a diploma in disability. She is also profoundly deaf, and has been since birth.

Ms Carlton works in a Disability Care centre in Melbourne as a support person for people with varied disabilities, including hearing impairment. But despite her qualifications and obvious ability to understand the challenges people with disabilities face everyday, she is still treated differently by her other, able-bodied colleagues.

Ms Carlton approached news.com.au with her story on the condition of anonymity.

Originally from the United Kingdom, Ms Carlton was born profoundly deaf, perhaps due to being born three months premature. She grew up using British Sign Language and also learnt how to speak with the assistance of a cochlear implant and speech therapy.

Since moving to Australia a few years ago, Ms Carlton has also learned Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and can communicate effectively with a combination of speech, sign language and lip reading.

In much of her life, Ms Carlton has found support and normalisation of her disability, but for the past year she has experienced discrimination in her job.

“Throughout the year my colleagues have had trouble communicating with me and made me feel as though I was one of the clients,” Ms Carlton told news.com.au. “They have no concept of what it is [like] to be deaf and how to communicate with me. People get impatient or annoyed with me when I ask them to repeat of what they were saying to me.”

Ms Carlton says that she is regularly ignored during staff meetings, and often leaves meetings “none the wiser” regarding what has been said or the task she has been assigned.

“Being deaf doesn’t mean you are stupid, people just have to face me and talk normally. Not to cover their mouths, turn away when speaking to me, not to shout and say the words slowly,” she said.

According to Ms Carlton, staff often accuse her of selective hearing, and manipulating her disability in some way to achieve what she wants. These claims leave her incredulous.

“They say ‘you are making out like you don’t understand me when you can’, and ‘you hear when you want to’,” she told news.com.au.

“I guess it is hard for some people to understand about deafness. I wear cochlear implant and I can hear a quite [a lot] of things but I rely on lip reading, which means I need to read people’s mouths when they are talking.

“I explain that they were talking too fast or moved their mouth away which made it difficult for me.”

When Ms Carlton experiences difficulty and asks her colleagues to repeat their sentence, they get impatient and tell her it “doesn’t matter”, rather than repeat. She said she finds this quite frustrating.

“There are many times I would feel so humiliated and frustrated because I was unable to keep up in staff meetings, or when people make a joke of my deafness. It always makes me feel so small, and, of course, it also makes me feel angry.”

Ms Carlton’s experience has shocked her and left her feeling powerless. She is afraid to speak out publicly for fear of losing her job.

“People need to understand that those who are deaf are capable of doing anything, no matter what. To me, my ears are broken, that’s all, but everything else is completely fine.

“People think people with deafness are ‘slow’, ‘stupid’, not capable of working as a support worker, or even have an independent life.

“They need to understand that deaf people face lots of barriers [in] communication. People who don’t know sign language need to learn to be patient with them by talking clearly.”

Kyle Miers, Chief Executive from Deaf Australia agrees that discrimination in the deaf sector is a prevalent issue.

“Discrimination in the workplace is basically rife in the deaf sector. It is happening every day through various experiences and situations, mainly because of communication issues,” Mr Miers said.

*Name has been changed to protect privacy.