The understanding of disability emerges from a multifaceted cultural, social, political and medical understanding. A deaf child is more often than not is born to hearing parents, and so experiences limited spheres of communication with the outside world. Not only is the outside world inaccessible, but many times even the closest members of the family are not able to communicate with the deaf child. The natural language of a deaf individual is Sign Language (SL) but conversations with deaf individuals’ points to the fact they were encouraged from a very young age to verbalise themselves. Additionally, if they had residual hearing left, they were made to wear hearing aids. These hearing aids require a complete reorientation process towards hearing and speech as well as makes the individual communicate using only words and not SL. Moreover, since the aids rely on residual hearing, they do not restore within an individual the same hearing abilities as a person with no hearing loss would have. This puts deaf individuals in betwixed positions of not being able to be a part of the Deaf minority linguistic community, which communicates in SL, nor be a complete part of the hearing world.
The society stigmatised the deaf individual not only for not being able to communicate in ways they are physically unable to as well as for the ways that they are comfortable in. The institutions around the deaf individuals make no effort to include them, to accommodate them. The family learns little and basic SL, if at all. The educational and work institutions do not have SL interpreters. Nor is SL taught in schools for hearing students. In essence the society restricts them and isolates them, leading to an adversely affected mental health and image of self.
