Deaf People Disability

Hearing is something people take for granted because living without it, is not something a lot of people know. With not knowing or even understanding the struggles a Deaf person goes through, comes a sense of discrimination from lack of understanding. Deaf people are sometimes paired with being unintelligent, this makes an immediate association of deafness to dumb. This societal barrier is one where deaf people are looked down upon for something they have no control over. Deaf people lack the opportunity of acceptance to prove themselves as something other than their disability. The immediate abhor that is

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.

People used to think that being Deaf was a sin and a major disability. I don’t really understand this view, as being Deaf is not a choice because a majority of the time, most people are born Deaf. Just because a person can’t hear, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with them. Deaf culture is so mesmerizing as their is such a deep connection within the community and they even have their own language. What people need to do is put themselves in the shoes of a Deaf person and imagine how difficult it must be being the “odd one out” all the time.

In the movie, “Audism Unveiled” we learn that audism is a negative or oppressive attitude towards deaf people by either deaf or hearing people and organizations, and the failure to accommodate them. The documentary opened my eyes as to what the deaf community and what deaf people really go through, in the world. People who don't fully understand the deaf community and what being deaf is really like catoregize them as something less than human making false accusations as well as “walking on eggshells” thinking that they can’t do anything for themselves. We learn that the term audism is in the same discriminative category just like racism, and [ …]

The purpose of this research paper is to answer the major question, what is Deaf culture? There are three sub-questions that will assist in answering the major question: (1) What constitutes Deaf culture? (2) How has American Sign Language impacted the Deaf community? (3) What are the major issues that are being addressed in Deaf culture today? With these questions answer, it will give a better understanding as to what Deaf culture is and that it is indeed a culture.

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

The phrase "but you don't look deaf" was the impetus for this research project. The stereotype exists that if you are deaf or have another disability, you are easily distinguished by visual clues that the person is deaf. This research sought to discover if hearing people were correct in this assumption, and you could tell that someone was deaf because of a particular visual clues that would indicate they are deaf. In order to research this idea, I made a survey online using google forms using images of both hearing, hard of hearing and deaf people and asked respondents to choose one of the responses. The findings are being presented with google spreadsheets and google forms.

Two centuries ago, the Deaf community arose in American society as a linguistic minority. Members of this community share a particular human condition, hearing impairment. However, the use of American Sign Language, as their main means of communicating, and attendance to a residential school for people with deafness also determine their entry to this micro-culture. Despite the fact that Deaf activists argue that their community is essentially an ethnic group, Deaf culture is certainly different from any other cultures in the United States. Deaf-Americans cannot trace their ancestry back to a specific country, nor do Deaf neighborhoods exist predominantly throughout the nation. Additionally, more than ninety percent of deaf persons are born

First, this book allowed me to see the negative way in which deaf people were perceived. This book is not old by any means, and I was taken aback by the way deaf children were perceived by not only others in the community, but often times by their own parents as well. The term

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 Deaf President Now movement and Gallaudet University protest did not only achieve its aims, this revolution brought unity to the Deaf Community and awareness to the general public. This revolution grew into a civil rights movement, consequently enacting legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and The Telecommunications Accessibility Enhancement Act of 1988, to benefit deaf and hard of hearing citizens as well as many other disabled Americans. The events of February and March 1988 are still a great source of pride and enlightenment that are still nostalgically looked back on by this generation of deaf citizens. The Deaf community can be described as being a relatively private community, consisting of many people with various ranges of hearing loss. Like any culture, the deaf have their own community, culture, language, and essentially a separate world from the hearing majority. However, it has only been in the last few decades that there has been awareness and acceptance of this culture, nevertheless there is not full acceptance and understanding of this community and deafness in general. Prior to this revelation, deaf people had been oppressed and ostracised throughout history. Dating back to Ancient Greece, deaf people were seen as a subordinate minority. Aristotle theorised that people could only learn through spoken language, therefore deaf people were seen as being unable to learn and were not given an education. This was a common

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

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 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,

Bauman and Murray (2010) defines Deaf Studies as “interdisciplinary approaches to the exploration of Deaf individuals, communities, and cultures as they have evolved within a larger context of power and ideology” (p. 210). In other words, Deaf Studies refer to a specific academic field that studies deaf individuals and their unique communities and culture and may include constructs from anthropology, linguistics, bilingual education, disability, audiology, etc. Within the context of Deaf Studies, deaf individuals are no longer defined solely by their lack of hearing, but by their cultural, linguistic, and sensorial ways of being in the world (Bauman & Murray, 2010). That is why we hear people educated with Deaf Studies saying ASL kids to refer to deaf kids who use American Sign Language (ASL) system as their mode of communication or see them writing “Deaf” instead of “deaf” to give reference to the universally-recognized culture of people who are deaf or hard of hearing.