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retraclast Thursday at 5:02 PM3 repliesview on HN

Sensory disabilities like deafness and blindness are disabling because the world is not oriented to people with sensory disabilities.

I am reminded that the Deaf have their own mythology. American Sign Language is distinct; it's not English. Accordingly it has its own culture, including its own myths. Many of them are fables and stories from the western tradition slightly adapted. But some are original.

One common theme in American Deaf mythology (but I'd bet it's told elsewhere too) is stories about a world which is visually oriented. There's an ASL word for this world but English doesn't have one. Sometimes it's translated as Eyeth a.k.a. "Eye-Earth".

It's more than just a world where everyone is deaf or where everyone communicates in ASL. It has something like spiritual meaning to some of those who tell stories about it; in that world the Deaf are not disabled, not in the social way that matters.


Replies

MBCookyesterday at 2:42 AM

Reminds me of The Country of the Blind by HG Wells.

It’s about a guy who finds his way into a valley in a mountain range where everyone has been blind for generations. At first he thinks that he’ll have “a superpower“ because he’s sighted. Instead the people of the valley view his sight as an illness.

engineer_22last Thursday at 10:29 PM

That's fascinating, is this explained in detail somewhere? How did you learn about this?

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UltraSanelast Thursday at 7:45 PM

No, deafness and blindness are disabling because they provide critical long range data. Being able to see is essentially a superpower if you are blind. Same with hearing.

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