Communicating with ASL empowers the Deaf:
Communication is the cornerstone of all human relationships, and meaningful communication needs two people who understand each other. Since one of the main aims of all education has been the development of spoken language as the most acceptable means of interaction, the larger hearing community tend to regard those who don’t communicate through speech as inferior. This is a major challenge to any Deaf child or adult. Around six percent of people living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are deaf or hard-of-hearing, and the hearing community has difficulty understanding and integrating them.

The Deaf do not see themselves as disabled or handicapped, but as a cultural linguistic group that uses American Sign Language (ASL), a unique and rich language using hand and facial expressions. The differences between ASL and spoken languages, used by the larger hearing community, result in many Deaf people feeling like foreigners in their own country.

Accept me and accept my language:
The problem faced by a Deaf child or adult is not their inability to hear meaningful sounds. The issue is being cut off from other people who speak a different language. However, many in the hearing community think that the Deaf are unable to live a normal life. A Deaf person’s dream is to be accepted in his or her own right, as a fully contributing member of society. Entitled to all rights and opportunities afforded hearing people, including the right to have their own language and culture, within the boundaries of the greater community. Most Deaf regard ASL as their preferred language, an important part of a separate cultural identity, shared by community members, that is barely comprehended by mainstream society. This is not a community of people living in close proximity to each other, but rather in the sense of shared values and experiences, and above all a shared language.

Social development programs in the GTA that are unable to integrate Deaf participants, particularly from immigrant families, usually resulting in a negative impact on each individual. Given these structural features of their community life, Deaf people may have considerable difficulty in making a contribution to society unless they can achieve bilingualism (ASL together with English and/or French). The fact that only a relatively small number of the Deaf are in that position makes it all the more important that hearing people understand the characteristics of the Deaf community.

Most Deaf children are not born into the Deaf community:
The paradox is that 90 percent of Deaf children are not born into the Deaf community, but to hearing parents, who have probably never encountered deafness before. Their home life requires contact with the hearing parent’s spoken language. On the other hand 90% of Deaf parents have hearing children, and in this lies a similar difficulty. Few of the estimated 180,000 GTA families with Deaf children learn any sign language. Deafness may not even be suspected until speech fails to develop, with diagnosis coming as a traumatic shock to many families. And those who do choose to communicate in ASL have almost no support. After years of auditory training, and struggling with a Deaf child who lacks the ability to communicate, some parents turn later to ASL. In these early days, parents need all the help they can get, from other parents and Deaf people as well as professionals.

Programs offered by Silent Voice satisfy the yearning for interaction and development among Deaf children, Deaf adults and their families. The resources we raise have to support the costs of meeting the demand, and continued requests for subsidies from families unable to pay the user fees.

Our Major Donors

The following Foundation and Corporation Donors have provided funding towards
Silent Voice programs from 2008 to 2009: