|
If you're writing a subjective essay about it, then my own answer would be no, deaf people are not disabled. It's just a question of the Other - the dominant culture sets the definitions for everything and this goes for pretty much all cases, not just hearing/deaf.
Interpretator mentioned the use of assistive devices... take the TTY for example, deaf people use TTY's to communicate/call other people, so in a hearing culture this can be seen as an assistive device for a disability. But if you just look at it as a form of technology then it's really not that different from a telephone. If everyone in the world had TTYs instead of phones, they wouldn't be assistive devices. If everyone had vibrating alarm clocks, or flashing light smoke detectors instead of ones that made noise, then same thing. It's just a question of majority vs minority... what makes people disabled in the first place. I have to admit, there are a few lame-ish exceptions to this I've come up with, like the cost of different kinds of technology, hearing environmental sounds/signifiers of danger, and the benefits, or maybe lack thereof, that the use of "deaf" technology would provide to hearing people. For the most part, though, I don't think deaf people are disabled apart from the pathological definition.
I wish I could get a topic like that for a paper at my school. It'd be nice to shock my professor with my 20-something pages I'd end up writing...
|