The general term to describe people who have acquired hearing loss and use spoken and written language is deaf with a lower case ‘d.’
Deaf with a capital ‘D’ is used to describe people who see themselves as belonging to a cultural and linguistical group who use British Sign Language (BSL) as their first language. This means, many Deaf people find written English difficult. They share a visual language, experiences, and a sense of identity and often don’t recognise themselves as disabled people. However, Deaf people are protected from disability discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.
