Imagine there's something different about you. Maybe no-one can tell just from looking at you, but it makes it a little bit harder for you to join in fully. You don't fully understand everything that other people do.
What you do understand is that you could join in, you could do everything that people who aren't different can do - if you had the right help and support and if people around you understood a little more about you.
But you don't, and they don't. And so, in effect, you become a second class citizen. You are less likely to reach the same educational level, less likely to achieve your potential, more vulnerable and more likely to suffer. And all of these things are completely unnecessary.
Let's give this difference a name. Call it race, or sex, or belief, or sexual orientation. We haven't yet achieved equality or fairness for people whose difference has one of those names, but at least the problem is visible, and the need for change is well understood, and as a society we are committed to changing things.
Let's try another name. The issue of deafness is largely invisible: did you realise how vulnerable young deaf people are before you read my blog or the NDCS's website? The need for change is not well understood, so almost by definition our society is not committed to change. The NDCS exists to change that.
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