Title: Hearing privilege and Deaf disempowerment • Access • Public Address
Headings: Access
by Various artists

Access by Various artists
Hearing privilege and Deaf disempowerment
8 responses to this post

Content: But what is hearing privilege? By definition, hearing people can hear and usually can speak. This creates systematic and structural barriers for people who cannot hear or speak as hearing people do, i.e., the Deaf community. Deaf are unlike other disabled groups in that their “disability” is linguistic. Deaf can do everything except hear. Every other disabled group has access to hearing privilege. Naturally, Deaf, like other linguistic minorities, need interpreters to act as intermediaries between themselves and the hearing world. Deaf need to use hearing people to overcome the systematic barriers put up by hearing privilege. This is why hearing leaders are hired: because of their hearing privilege – that is, their ability to engage with the hearing world on behalf of their Deaf employers.