Socialization in the deaf community comes in multiple forms. For example, meeting at a restaurant. The meetings are known as "ASL dinner," "signing supper," or "silent supper." Another popular social meeting is the "deaf coffee," which is a gathering at a coffee shop to chat.

Hearing loss is associated with not only mental health conditions but also with numerous physical health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, anaemia, chronic kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, sleep apnea, balance problems and an increased risk of falls.

Basically, you are putting a microphone-speaker combination right in your ear. The sounds that a healthy ear would pick up are received by the microphone. When you are suffering from hearing loss, there are fewer hair cells within your inner ear that are detecting sound vibrations, and therefore, you cannot hear as well; but with a hearing aid, the vibrations are made so much louder that those few remaining cells can pick up the sound well enough to interpret it. This debunks the common misconception that anyone can use standard hearing aids. If you are completely deaf, there are no more cells to pick up the sound, so even if the vibrations are magnified, nothing can be heard.

It is possible for a completely deaf person to be able to hear, with the use of cochlear implants. However, the use of them, especially with deaf infants, is rather controversial. Many believe that it places emphasis on hearing people (us) being “superior” to those in the deaf community (this includes deaf and hard-of-hearing people).

Socialization in the deaf community comes in multiple forms. For example, meeting at a restaurant. The meetings are known as "ASL dinner," "signing supper," or "silent supper." Another popular social meeting is the "deaf coffee," which is a gathering at a coffee shop to chat.

One word to certainly avoid in the deaf community is “nevermind.” Saying nevermind to a person is essentially dismissing them, telling them that attempting to communicate with them is too much work and that they are not worth the effort. Remember: sometimes communication will take patience!

PTASL is a form of ASL that a person uses when they are both deaf and blind; they touch hands to read the signing.

Many can’t understand each other! American signers can often understand French signers because the founder of ASL is from France. However, American signers cannot understand British signers, even though the spoken languages are nearly identical!

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was a Yale graduate that helped establish the first formal school for the deaf in the U.S., the American School for the Deaf. This school still exists today in Hartford, Connecticut.

This may sound unsafe, but they have excellent peripheral vision - perhaps better than hearing people’s - and use visual cues to know when to do certain activities, such as stopping. Studies also suggest that deaf drivers are not any more likely to get into car crashes than hearing drivers.