The deaf community Essay

Document Type:Thesis

Subject Area:English

Document 1

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a law that was passed in 1990 to help in securing the rights of citizens with disabilities. Under the act, deaf people are entitled to the same services and treatment as anyone else. Under the concept of deaf people’s culture, being deaf is not a disability that needs fixing but a condition that needs to be embraced. Deaf culturists strongly support ADA and other laws that require private and public sectors to accommodate deaf people because this is the only way that the people belonging to the deaf community can perceive their capabilities in the general society. The general society views deaf people as people who belong to a different group known as the deaf-world.

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The American deaf people have benefited a lot from ADA in matters of protection of their rights and fair treatment by the hearing society (Glick, p48). ADA requires that public and private agencies must provide communication aids and services that deaf people need to communicate effectively. It also requires that agencies must give primary consideration to assisting people with hearing disability with an accurate interpreter when needed. With employment being a critical issue, ADA required that organizations must not reject applications from qualified deaf candidates and must provide reasonable accommodations for all employees with a hearing problem. With reasonable accommodations, deaf workers can easily communicate and get sufficient information about their tasks. Some deaf people may even feel offended and respond violently to audism actions or statements.

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The best approach to combat audism is to teach the deaf people how to ignore the offenders and the importance of striving to unlock their full potential. Even though the government considers deaf people as a minority group that is disabled, more than 300,000 deaf Americans do not consider themselves as disabled, but rather as members of a unique cultural and linguistic group (Jones). The focus on empowering the deaf community to make the society view them as people capable of performing any task and representing themselves in making decisions. Labeling themselves as a linguistic group instead of a disabled group separates them from their disabilities and hence helping them to fit easily in the hearing world. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has enforced rules that protect the rights of deaf people in the workplace, learning institution or during informal interaction.

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