As I described deaf people in my previous post, I would like to discuss how they could actually benefit from internet and this way make the cap between themselves and hearing world smaller than it currently is. Deaf people do get most of their information by reading and seeing. Although not all deaf people are completely deaf, most of them can hear something, so they are not 100 % deaf. If they hear something they can also learn to talk – it is quite hard to learn to talk when you can’t hear what you are saying and how loud you are saying it.
But all this does not matter when they are talking online. I have a friend who is half-deaf. He can speak, but mostly he tries to understand what people are saying by reading lips. He does not have any problems communicating in internet through emails or MSN. I have to admit that he does not write grammatically correct Estonian, but he tries and at the same time understands everything that is told him.
Internet helps him and others like him to be part of the world. At least in the internet there is almost nothing that he could not do. Internet helps him to get more information, helps him to communicate with people that otherwise would never get in contact with him. Internet helps them to be normal not different from society. I think it is most important for young children and teenagers, a deaf person can have hard time seeing pop-culture on the streets, but not being able or just too afraid to be part of it. But as more and more of youngsters are hooked with internet, the minority young deaf people are taken as equals.
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