[daveloyall]

ah, "mainstreamed" means not using ASL as your primary language (or at all, sounds like?), got it.

I have seen folks make a related distinction: born deaf or lost hearing.

Then there are some categories which are defined by physiology: some folks can't receive any benefit from cochlear implants because the biological hardware isn't there to interface with.

This just blows my mind: There are folks who fall into the subset of a subset of a subset and thus are so different from me that it's hard to imagine what it is like to be them, and yet, through ASL for example, or games, or so many things, it becomes apparent that they are just like me--and again, not at all. Minds are neat.

[adinisom]

For others reading, "mainstreamed" means being placed in a regular classroom. An ASL user might be mainstreamed with interpreters for communication access. On the other hand someone who grows up using oral methods for communication might use hearing aids, CI, FM units, reading/writing in a mainstream classroom.