Alex says: "Unfortunately for most of the congenitally deaf you can't just wait for them to grow the ability to hear. But the real lack is still there, even though they don't feel it in the least."

They may not "feel" the lack (in that they may not "miss" a song they've never heard anyway), but I have to think that they feel excluded from conversations between hearing people, and excluded by the hearing population in general. So, at the very least, I think they must feel a lack of human contact, a lack of acceptance.

In "P.C." terms, we think of a "handicap" or "disability" as being a physical or mental condition that affects one's ability to function in everyday life as would someone without that condition. Obviously, deafness fits that definition. There are occupations that would be challenging for a deaf person that would not be for a hearing person, and a deaf person would require special equipment to hold certain jobs if they could be held by him at all. For instance, I'm guessing that a deaf person applying to be a translator of speech into sign language would face a challenge (even a lip-reader doesn't always read lips accurately!). So how can it not be "P.C." to say that a deaf person is handicapped, challenged or disabled... unless the issue is that the deaf community doesn't wish to have that "label" stuck on them?

It does seem as if at least some in the deaf community want others to consider them as simply speaking a foreign language (ASL or other sign language) and as having a different culture. The thing is, they're not immigrants bringing their culture with them; they're people of different cultures thrown together by their sensory loss and by their isolation from the elements of all cultures (music, storytelling, etc.) that the hearing share.