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From: David.Wetherow@p0.f5.n382.z1.fidonet.org (David Wetherow)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Hearing
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Date: 5 Jan 90 03:39:37 GMT
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Index Number: 6129

One of the best stories in this whole field is the book, "Everyone 
There Spoke Sign Language", by Mary Ellen Groce, Harvard University 
Press.  Groce was an ethnologist who was doing research in Martha's 
Vineyard, Massachusetts.  Found that for about two hundred years, 25% 
of the people on the island were deaf, and EVERYONE spoke sign 
language.  They didn't think that deafness was a handicap, just a 
natural variation in the human condition, like brown or blue eyes.  
"Those people weren't handicapped, they were just deaf."  People had 
same marital/social/economic/cultural status as everyone else.

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