I can hear you and I can watch your mouth move, and then I put together the sounds and the visual image and I can understand the words as I integrate the two signals.

Watch me when people say deaf and dumb, or deaf mute, and I give them a look like you might get if you called Denzel Washington the wrong name.

It was ability that mattered, not disability, which is a word I'm not crazy about using.

I guess not being able to hear just made me adventurous and daring. And in most cases, that didn't make my parents very happy with me.

During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn.

I learned to speak first, and then to sign. I have never really known what it was like to hear, so I cant compare hearing aids to normal hearing.

When I learned to sign and speak at the same time, the whole world opened up to me. That's the beauty of encouraging kids who are deaf to use whatever it takes to communicate.