Lisa received her Bachelor's degree in Psychology from MacMurray College. She completed her graduate studies at SIUC's Educational Psychology Program for a Master's degree in Adult and Adolescent Counseling. For more information about Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program at Paraquad, email either Bill Sheldon or Lisa Cowsert. All hearing losses are the same. The single term deafness covers a wide range of hearing losses that have very different effects on a person's ability to process sound and, thus, to understand speech.
All deaf people are mute.
Deafness usually has little effect on the vocal chords, and very few deaf people are truly mute. People with impaired hearing are deaf and dumb. The inability to hear affects neither native intelligence nor the physical ability to produce sounds. Deafness does not make people dumb in the sense of being either stupid or mute. Deaf people, understandably, find this stereotype particularly offensive.