Junior Arya Mididaddi’s failing her first hearing test as a newborn didn’t worry her parents: Babies often fail the test the first time they take it. But after she failed multiple times, her parents were shocked. They learned she had been born profoundly, or completely, deaf in both ears.

When Mididaddi was a year old, she underwent a cochlear implant procedure. The implant is an electronic device that does the work her inner ear cannot. She later had the same implant in her right ear when she was 5.

From the ages of 1 to 5, Mididaddi regularly visited an audiologist and a speech therapist to help develop her hearing and speech.

Audiologists specialize in diagnosing and treating individuals with hearing problems as well as evaluating and preventing hearing loss, according to ExploreHealthCareers. Speech therapists help impaired individuals develop their spoken communication skills, such as pronunciation and expression.

Mididaddi said that her audiologist “programmed” her by producing beeps in her ear for her to process as her first sounds.

Her speech therapist, on the other hand, helped her to catch up to her peers in spoken communication. When Mididaddi received her first implant at 1, it was her first time hearing and speaking, so she was a year behind in speech.

Also around the age of 1, Mididaddi began to attend Weingarten Children’s Center in Redwood City, a non-profit, state-accredited school for children with hearing impairments.

Mididaddi said many children at the center disliked wearing their implants, taking them off and throwing tantrums when required to wear them.

Mididaddi had few such issues. Her teachers and parents encouraged her to develop her speech skills by making her use her implants.

“The teachers there specifically focus on making speech therapy a part of everyday life,” Mididaddi said. “My parents also forced me to wear the implants — they forced me to hear and learn and listen.”

Mididaddi added that her family, especially her grandma, played a large role in helping her open up after getting her implants.

Mididaddi cannot remember being able to hear for the first time because she had her left ear implanted at such a young age.

“I was taught to be hearing,” she said. “I was never taught as if I was deaf, so no one ever taught me how to sign.”

After she adjusted to her cochlear implants, Mididaddi’s life has been similar to students born with full hearing. Junior Karthi Sankar, Mididaddi’s friend since fourth grade, said she has not noticed any problems.

“She’s like any normal person,” Sankar said. “There really isn’t any difference in her personality just because she [was born] deaf.”

When Mididaddi entered her junior year of high school, she signed up for the West Valley American Sign Language course available to Saratoga High students.

Although she doesn’t need sign language to communicate, she signed up to connect more with the deaf community, which she would’ve been a part of if not for her implants. Mididaddi said it’s nice to be learning a language that in some ways, connects to her and her background.

The class meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:30-5 p.m. in Room 706 at Saratoga High and is taught by Tracy Meng, who grew up using ASL with her deaf family. Overall, Mididaddi enjoys the learning the language, although she said that the learning process can be longer than that of other languages because Meng introduces new vocabulary by individually finger-spelling each word with the ASL alphabet.

Mididaddi said she is also taking ASL in case there is some complication with her implants in her future, though she said she is capable of communication with lip reading.

Despite her ability to hear with her cochlear implants, Mididaddi does not consider herself as part of the hearing community. Rather, she views herself as a member of the cochlear community, made up of people like herself.

Mididaddi said she chose to take ASL in order to associate herself more with the deaf community.

“It’s like a part of me,” Mididaddi said. “It’s a different timeline of my life that I could’ve gone through, but I never actually did.”