This culture of "deafness is not a disease or disability but simply a difference" is hugely present in the United States.
It seems a truly perverse way of looking at the world.
I suppose, in part, it derives from the fact that the deaf have their own well-developed language, and where there is a language, there is a culture.
The other root of its origin, I suspect, is the American view that democratic attitudes must be put to every human institution. It has become true in public education, higher education, and many other institutions where once authority or expertise had some role, and it has been anything but a unmixed blessing.
The irony of course is that these democratic biases seem to be applied everywhere but the place they truly belong, politics, America's electoral system having many serious democratic deficits.
Culture or not, reasonable people cannot accept that being deaf is not a fairly substantial human disability.
