Dr. Paddy’s Corner

- Building a Mountain -

Dr. Paddy Ladd, who coined the word DEAFHOOD, makes the call to recognize a great need to address long-standing negative associations, ideologies and beliefs/ attitudes by building a mountain of positive Deaf philosophies, creativity, politics, and so forth to overtake those long-standing views. The world experienced a brief resurgence of positive views on Deaf people in the 1960’s when linguists scientifically proved, what Deaf people have long known, that sign languages around the world are true languages in their own right.

This resurgence hit a snag after the 1970’s, when mainstreaming, cochlear implants and genetic engineering came on the scene, robbing Deaf people of a sense of their own existentialism. Thanks to Dr. Ladd's inspiration, Deafhood Foundation was founded to work on building that mountain by providing Deaf people and our allies mountain-building tools through activism, networking, outreach, education and grants.

We invite you to get to know Dr. Paddy through a collection of videos below (please note that English translations of these videos are not available).