What matters deafness of the ears, when the mind hears?

This comes from another forum related to deafness. Interesting but the klutz in me don’t really get some of the technical aspects of it, heh. (I am a Mac user, not a programmer.)

Why am I writing about this? Not everyone has money to burn. Here’s a few alternatives to the UbiDuo, something I call the "poor mans communications device." This will use something you most likely already have or can get for cheap. This particular method can be used as both a captioning *AND* communications device.

Read on…

Scholarly but readable and well articulated piece on the concept of deaf identity and culture, by "Lennard J. Davis, who grew up with deaf parents, is a professor of English, disability and human development, and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

Well worth a read.

The construct of the deaf as a linguistic, ethnic minority is attractive, but flawed. Yes, it has removed the biological stigma of deafness; for the most part, the deaf are no longer viewed as "handicapped" or "disabled." Deaf people get to be a sociological group, a "community." But there is a negative side: The idea of an ethnic group or minority is tinged with the brutal history of racial politics. There is a sense in which slavery, apartheid, miscegenation laws, and medical experiments have forged the apartness of the racialized minority and in which the oppressor group has created the oppressed. Is that the best model on which deafness should base its existence?