Evaluating stakeholders in information for parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing

Parents of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (D/HH) need clear and complete information about early intervention options. There is a body of research on parents’ reactions to, and perceptions of, information they encountered following their child’s diagnosis, but little research examining the information itself. This paper reports on a research project examining the evaluative meanings of information on the websites of the two early intervention providers in NSW, Australia. Both providers describe their services as “family-centered” on their websites. The appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics was used to analyze each website. Specifically, evaluations regarding the ‘capacity’ of providers and D/HH children are reported here. Providers are consistently evaluated as altruistic and expert, while D/HH children are consistently evaluated as requiring the specific kind of intervention program offered by these organizations in order to live a “normal” or “successful” life. Coupled with the lack of information about alternative approaches to early intervention, the information provided appears to be inconsistent with principles of family-centered intervention.