It seems as though many people think that being Deaf is a handicap, a disability. These people believe that communication that does not include an aural component is somehow less rich, less complete, less worthwhile than spoken communication. I think it's this attitude which breeds the notion that Deaf people are somehow disabled, less-than-normal.

I think that attitude is complete nonsense.

As a student of American Sign Language since June of 2001, I can state pretty unequivocally that signed communication is equally as rich, nuanced, and expressive as English. In some ways, I find it to be even more so. ASL has a variety of language constructs -- classifiers, pronominalization and directional verbs, for example -- that allow certain kinds of concepts to be expressed far more clearly and concisely than spoken language ever does. Because ASL is a 3-dimensional, spatial language, spatial concepts and relationships are especially easy to communicate.

The prevailing wisdom of the medical community for over a century has been to discourage the use of sign languages by Deaf people. The belief was that Deaf children who learned to sign would never learn English, and never be able to function in the hearing world. The hearing parents of Deaf children, who often feel guilt and shame towards their child, cling to this belief, and genuinely believe they are doing the right things.

The problem is that this doesn't work in real life. In forcing Deaf children to learn English to the exclusion of ASL, these children are left in a space where they're not really a part of the Deaf community, and they'll never -- no matter how well they learn English and lip-reading -- be the same thing as a hearing child. Trying to make them that way is, in my opinion, a lost cause.

To me, Deafness is not a disability, or a handicap. I have friends who are Deaf and friends who are hearing. To me, the only reason why Deafness is relevant to me is so that I know whether to speak or sign to them. Deafness means  nothing more, or less, than using an alternate communications method. People are people, and whether they're Deaf or hearing doesn't -- and shouldn't -- make any difference.