The Deaf/Blind Population

This research examines the deaf/blind population as a minority within the current American culture, for the purpose of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of mainstream society and determining possible ways in which the discipline of social work can engage the process of social transformation and reform with this population. The research will set forth salient characteristics of this group and discuss ways in which the deaf and/or blind population has been identified as a minority within society, and also discuss the content of the values and traditions, strengths and resources, and needs and problems that the deaf/blind contribute to the diversity of contemporary culture. Based on evidence provided, the research will evaluate the dimensions of power informing the experience of culture by the deaf/blind, citing, as appropriate, how concepts of powerlessness figure into such experience, whether social or economic, with a view toward evaluating the impact of mainstream values and power on the values of the relatively less powerful subgroup. As well, reference will be made to the content and scope of social and economic contribution that the deaf/blind community make to the culture, vis-�-vis the mainstream culture's social and economic resources and services targeted toward meeting the needs of that community.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, passed into law in 1990 and implemented in 1991, was a revised and extended version of a the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section

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about the content of inputs in particular is suggestive for the course of social work. To be sure, symptoms of social pathology may be prominent in an individual member of a subgroup, but it may be equally crucial to recognize and articulate the social-power inequities entrenched wide-system pathology. Hence the potential for advocacy for minority privilege and entitlements to be granted by the mainstream. It should be understood that subcultures that function outside the overarching system are themselves systems; the emergence of deaf culture (= system) illustrates that point. But there obviously is potential for the subsystem to become an actor, or power competitor, within the larger system. Using the metaphor of the organism (actor) functioning in the environment/ecology (system), Germain (1979) cites the potential for arriving at a "goodness of fit" in the social sense, hence pointing the way toward a social-work objective that would enable the minority-group member to experience the meeting of psychological and/or social needs. In that view, a deaf/blind "misfit" could experience alienation, perhaps from the mainstream culture, to the degree assimilation or standing or power is not achieved within it, or perhaps from the sub

Category: Psychology - T