And they are certainly keen to learn how the law might serve them. While he is not profoundly religious he believes things can happen for a purpose. Mr Nicholson will be working with the National Manager of the Australasian Association of the Deaf, Carol-Lee Aquiline. The program will be designed for school children, tertiary students, young adults and adults. Mr Nicholson said the legal system does not consciously discriminate against deaf people but it poses some big problems for them, particularly in its stringency and comparative inflexibility.
Word order is critical.
In a world based almost exclusively on hearing-related language, deaf people see themselves not as disabled, but severely disadvantaged. Mr Nicholson hopes not merely to tell deaf people about the law and their legal rights, but to inform lawyers and especially law students of the special problems deaf people face. Because deafness is not visible, people tend to think a person does not understand, rather than that they cannot hear. On the other hand, Mr Nicholson is continually meeting people who, when they hear him speaking perfectly normally, refuse to believe he cannot hear them. He acknowledged that the level of education among congenitally deaf people in Australia is generally not high.