I’m not sure my answer it completely accurate, if someone else can do better that would be good. My statement comes from a young woman, a karate blackbelt at the dojo I used to train in.
She was deaf. She could speak, in a flat tone, having had cochlear implants to allow some hearing… She did not consider herself part of “the deaf community”. She and her mom both explained that those people did not consider themselves to have a handicap, just that the rest of us had an extra ability. Some of them had even told these two ladies that the one should not have had the implants. Some seemed to be very insular, and self-righteous about their status.
I can’t point anyone to a cite for what I’ve spoken about above, it’s all based on what two people told me.
This is all very complicated, and I can’t answer in a short post-- although I will note that Deaf people did not come up with the term “hearing-impaired,” and have never liked it. Back when I was at Gallaudet in 1987-88, people did not like hearing-impaired, and preferred Deaf.
Later, when I have time, I will start a thread about Deaf community and culture identification.
My hearing is fine, but my auditory processing and short-term memory are dubious, so I use subtitles/closed captioning to help me. Live CC can be inaccurate, and sometimes wildly wrong. Nothing takes you out of a scene or causes you to miss what is being said more than hilarity at very wrong words in CC.
I’ve read several places that many deaf people don’t view deafness as a disability. Some don’t want to get surgery with an implant that could very well give them some ability to hear. I worked with a professor who later got one of the first cochlear implants in the US and he was happy to get it.
During the most recent Super Bowl, they had a sign language interpreter during the singing of the national anthem. Except they also had the words on the display in the stadium and they didn’t keep the interpreter on screen for the broadcast. So I’m not sure what or who that was useful for. (Plus does anyone need someone to interpret the song? The lyrics are fairly well-known.)
When I was with the feds, and was managing several hearing impaired employees, thereby having to takes classes on ASL, everyone made it clear that the proper term was “hearing impaired” since some of the workers could hear- just poorly. So, not deaf.
The classes i took in ASL several years ago made it clear that Deaf was preferred for those who were immersed in the culture, and that while some subset of people preferred to be called hearing impaired- they usually didn’t learn ASL or consider themselves part of the Deaf community.