An Introduction To The Deaf Community Summary

“Deaf in America” book mainly focused on Deaf culture of today and comparing it to the culture of the past. The stories in the book describes what kind of struggles deaf people had to go through in order to get to where they are today. The book, “Deaf in America”, were written by two authors, Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, both in which are deaf. Padden and Humphries were able to collect factors, stories, and experiences of other deaf people within America and compiled them into one book describing their perspective of the world of the hearing. Padden and Humphries wanted to show how deaf culture was different from hearing culture. The reader of the book gets a chance to travel through the history to those who have experienced the deaf world first handed. The book also presented a positive impact to the readers by letting the readers know in the introduction that the authors writing the book were deaf and would indicate that the experience were real and true. Padden and Humphries

In chapter 4, it explains how Deaf people live in a hearing world. Some people who have grown up with Deaf people really don't see Deaf people as any different than themselves. Verditz had an idea that sign language comes from spoken languages, English and ASL are similar and different from each other having English as my first language has helped me learn ASL but the sentence structures are very different from English. Sign language is a visual language.

In 1973 the rehabilitation Act was created. This act prohibits any discrimination against the disabled. It requires accessibility to employment, education, health, welfare, and social services.

Deaf and hard of hearing people are just like us. They are not any different, but hears like us. There is some common misunderstanding, that is really annoying for Deaf and hard of hearing people. Those misunderstanding are can you understands us? Are you able to drive? Do you need a wheelchair? Can you read and write? Do deaf people have sex? Etc.…These kinds of questions annoyed deaf people the most. People do not realize that deaf people do not have as much as difficulty as normal folks thinks that they have. They can do almost everything and just as much no less. Sometime, they begged to be considered the same as hearing folks. They want to be equals, respected, and value just as much as hearing people. Sometime, we forgot to ask ourselves.

The deaf community does not see their hearing impairment as a disability but as a culture which includes a history of discrimination, racial prejudice, and segregation. According to PBS home video “Through Deaf Eyes,” there are thirty-five million Americans that are hard of hearing (Hott, Garey & et al., 2007) . Out of the thirty-five million an estimated 300,000 people are completely deaf. There are over ninety percent of deaf people who have hearing parents. Also, most deaf parents have hearing children. With this being the exemplification, deaf people communicate on a more intimate and significant level with hearing people all their lives. “Deaf people can be found in every ethnic group, every region, and every economic class.” The

Captions allow viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing to follow the dialogue and the action of program simultaneously . The Nation 's first captioning agency the caption center was founded in 1972 at the boston public television station WGBH . In the past some news bulletins presidential addresses ,or programming created by or for deaf and hard of hearing audience were open captioned. Captions for deaf audiences at the time they are produced and distributed .

The deaf culture is one that I am not familiar with. No one in my immediate family or none of my close friends are deaf so I have not been exposed to it during my lifetime. I decided to take an American Sign Language course in high school to not only learn the language, but to learn about the deaf culture as well. I would like to someday be fluent in sign language so that I can cater to the deaf community while conducting business. Conducting research, I learned a lot about to deaf community. Deaf people are presumed to have a disability because they do not have the ability to use all five senses. The Deaf community is a cultural group, sharing common experience, concerns, and language

There are numerous facts concerning the Deaf culture that I am not aware of, and a few of those elements have been made known. One of the new facts that surprised me was that approximately 90 percent of Deaf people are married to other Deaf people. This goes along with them being a tight-knit community. Another interesting piece of information I have learned is that I am to focus on a signer’s face, instead of their hands, while they are signing. Once I began to consider the expressions he or she would be showing while signing, and how one should pay attention while talking to another, it made perfect sense.

The deaf community does not see their hearing impairment as a disability but as a culture which includes a history of discrimination, racial prejudice, and segregation. According to an online transcript,“Through Deaf Eyes” (Weta and Florentine films/Hott productions Inc., 2007) there are thirty-five million Americans that are hard of hearing. Out of the thirty-five million an estimated 300,000 people are completely deaf. There are ninety percent of deaf people who have hearing parents (Halpern, C., 1996). Also, most deaf parents have hearing children. With this being the exemplification, deaf people communicate on a more intimate and significant level with hearing people all their lives. “Deaf people can be found in every ethnic group,

The deaf subculture has always seemed so interesting, American Sign Language (ASL) is so intriguing, a personal friend is deaf and it is amazing, the fact that hearing and speaking could change a person’s culture so drastically. This essay will explain in broad terms what the deaf culture is like and how it is separate

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

There is a Deaf community within nearly every community in America. Spanning across the country, this community overlaps with many other minority groups. There is a Deaf community within nearly every minority group not only in America, but worldwide. According to DeafQueer.org, the Deaf LGBT community is a community is a minority within a minority, making up ten percent of the Deaf community, or 2.8 million people. Although they span many races, classes, and sexualities, Deaf LGBT people tend to identify as Deaf first and foremost. With this diversity however, come ignorance, discrimination, prejudice, and hate. Deaf LGBT people face discrimination based on their ability to hear, their sexuality, sexual identity, race, and class. This

In mainstream American society, we tend to approach deafness as a defect. Helen Keller is alleged to have said, "Blindness cuts people off from things; deafness cuts people off from people." (rnib.org) This seems a very accurate description of what Keller's world must have been. We as hearing people tend to pity deaf people, or, if they succeed in the hearing world, admire them for overcoming a severe handicap. We tend to look at signing as an inferior substitute for "real" communication. We assume that all deaf people will try to lip-read and we applaud deaf people who use their voices to show us how far they have come from the grips of their disability. Given this climate, many hearing people are surprised, as I was at

Deaf children are entitled to know that they are heirs to an amazing culture, not a pitiful defect. In order to follow through on that obligation, one of the best things I feel we can do is try to educate other hearing people about the realities of American Sign Language and Deaf culture. Language is one of the most critical aspects of most cultures, and one which sets deafness aside from other defects such as blindness, physical disability, or illness. Sign language is not universal, nor does it always correspond to the spoken language in the same country. For example American Sign Language is native to the United States and Canada. Deaf Canadians might use English, French, or both as a written language. But deaf people in Great Britain, while they may write in English, use a completely different sign language. (nad.org)

Recently I attended a seminar for work, on childcare and development, where they discussed how to work with children with hearing disabilities. At this event there was a population of predominantly people who used American Sign Language as their primary language as opposed to hearing people speaking. I have had interactions with deaf people before but only on an informal level, because most of the deaf people I have