Raising Awareness: Deaf or deaf?

What is the difference between deaf and Deaf? Is there really a distinction? Why, YES, there is!

I could not explain it any better myself than does the Wiki article on Deaf Culture, but in a nutshell, "Deaf" is a means of identifying oneself with the Deaf Culture, regardless of your hearing ability, and "deaf" refers to the medical delineation of hearing loss.

There are many terms floating around in our society, used mostly because of lack of knowledge, that are highly offensive to many Deaf individuals:

• Deaf and dumb (or deaf/mute): "Dumb" means an inability to speak, i.e., mute. Most Deaf are indeed able to speak, and many do so very well.
• Hearing impaired: Impairment refers to disability and has negative connotations. While hearing people consider deafness a disability, it is ONLY a disability because we as hearing individuals force it to be so. We fail to learn to communicate with Deaf individuals (but we will take a French or Spanish or German class in school), we refuse to give them jobs because we will need to ensure they have accommodations for their differences, etc. The only thing that makes Deaf people different in most cases is their means of communication; they are not freaks. After all, would you consider a visitor from a foreign country who speaks no English to be impaired or disabled just because of a language barrier?
• Deaf = mentally retarded: I ranted about this elsewhere, but all Deaf people are not cognitively impaired, nor are all cognitively impaired people deaf, so one does not equal the other. It is a stereotype that we need to toss out the window.
• Deaf = hard of hearing: Deafness in and of itself generally refers to a range of hearing loss that is severe to profound and may (but more likely may not) be "corrected" with the use of hearing aids. Hard of hearing individuals, on the other hand, generally have a range of hearing loss that is mild to moderate and CAN supplement their residual hearing with hearing aids.

There are other misconceptions regarding Deaf individuals and how to interact with them when their world touches ours, especially in health care. Many health care providers are unaware of their responsibility to ensure they effectively communicate with Deaf patients, preferably via a certified sign language interpreter. Many believe they can get away with "writing notes." This is a faulty assumption in that many hearing individuals fail to realize that ASL (the primary language of most Deaf) is NOT equivalent to English and that the average Deaf person reads at approximately a 4th grade level. Therefore, one cannot expect to effectively communicate an INFORMED CONSENT to someone who is not operating on the same communication level, if they refuse to use a sign language interpreter and ensure that the other party is truly understanding and giving consent to what they understood the information to mean.

The same goes for lip reading. While some Deaf can do this, many cannot. This is a skill that takes years to master and even then can lead to misinterpretations of what was said because of how the speaker moves his/her mouth, whether or not they have a beard and/or mustache, etc.

A great article explaining some of the common misconceptions regarding Deaf can be found at Where do we go from Hear? I particularly like the title, "Deaf People Are Contagious."