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Research Themes
1. Navigating the "In Between": Identity, Communication and the Diversity of d/Deaf Experiences
Participants reflected on experiences of moving between d/Deaf and hearing spaces, and how identity, communication, and belonging can shift across different environments and relationships. Participants also highlighted the diversity of d/Deaf experiences, communication preferences, and intersectional identities.
2. Experiences of Misunderstanding, Exclusion, and Misrecognition
Many participants described experiences of being misunderstood, excluded, underestimated, or not fully recognised by others or by unaccommodating systems. This included communication barriers, inaccessible environments, limited d/Deaf awareness, and the emotional impact of these experiences.
3: The Invisible Labour of Communication and Everyday Navigation Across Worlds
Participants reflected on the often-unseen mental, emotional, physical, and practical effort involved in communication and navigating everyday life. This included hearing fatigue (for those with hearing devices), lip-reading, planning around technology or interpreters, self-disclosure, and the additional effort required in many social and public situations.
4: Wellbeing as Layered and Evolving: Holding Struggle and Growth Together
Participants often described well-being as layered and evolving over time, where difficult experiences could coexist alongside growth, resilience, hope, reflection, and positive meaning-making. Wellbeing was often understood as an ongoing journey or process, rather than a fixed state.
5: Responding to Challenges Through Agency, Advocacy, and Self-Belief
Participants highlighted active ways of responding to challenges, including self-advocacy, resilience, creativity, pride in identity, and creating change for themselves or others. Many participants reflected on determination, empowerment, and challenging assumptions about what it means to be d/Deaf.
Participants reflected on experiences of feeling understood, accepted, supported, and able to connect with others. This included relationships within the Deaf community, d/Deaf friends, supportive family members and friends, hearing allies, accessible spaces, and environments where participants felt able to be fully themselves.
6: Belonging through Recognition and Connection
7: Embodied Regulation: Managing Energy and Sensory Recovery
Participants described different ways of nurturing their well-being and recovering from exhaustion or overwhelm. This included rest, quiet spaces, movement, nature, creativity, sensory or hearing breaks, spirituality and grounding or calming practices that supported emotional and physical wellbeing and recovery from the demands of everyday communication and navigation.
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