why does the author call deafness invisible and voiceless
Answers
Hearing loss is also called an invisible disability because you can't tell someone has hearing loss by looking at them. Unlike seeing someone with a cast on a broken leg, there's nothing visible that identifies someone with hearing loss, or signals that they need treatment.
GALLAUDET University is quiet now. Just a handful of summer school students stroll in the sun-drenched quad where four months ago, thousands of bundled-up students held banners and placards. And stayed put until they got what they wanted. The protest lasted a week here at the world's only liberal arts university for deaf students. And when it was over, for the first time in its 124-year history the school had a deaf president and more deaf representation on the board of trustees. The students' success was a victory for the faculty and much of the deaf community as well.
``It was time,'' says Jack Gannon, executive director of alumni relations at Gallaudet. ``Deaf people kept getting the same responses over and over, `You're not ready.'''
Perhaps the most dramatic civil rights protest in recent years, it was the culmination of years of effort by deaf people to establish their place in the sun: to have the right to work, to represent themselves in matters that pertain to their lives, to use their own language, and to have access to the hearing world.
``That opened up jobs in the post office, but it showed little accomplishment. In the 1960s, we learned in South Carolina that a blind superintendent was chosen to run a deaf school,'' says Mr. Olsen. ``Then we'd had it. People hit the streets demanding change and got it. Those kinds of things have enhanced the feeling that deaf people can get the necessary attention they deserve in fighting for their lives.''
Distinctive culture
Much of the deaf community considers itself a separate culture, rather than a disability group. ``We are a minority group with our culture, own language, mores, community, and social organizations,'' Dr. Jordan says. ``There are deaf clubs in every major city in the US. The American Athletic Association of the Deaf has tens of thousands of members, and there's a Deaf Olympics.''
It's a culture many are proud of. That wasn't always the case, Mr. Gannon says. ``When I was growing up, there was lots of negativism surrounding deafness. When I would use sign language with my friends, we would attract crowds. It gave deaf people the feeling that what they were doing was wrong. In the past two or three decades that's changed. Today, deaf people are proud of their culture, the language, the history.''