Its very cool that someone is asking about it...I am glad that it has happen.
Well…
First of all, I CANNOT speak for every deaf disc golfers out there. I will only speak from my own experiences. Others can jump in and speak their own.
Communications - it's always been a constant barrier for me to deal with at players meeting and meeting new players. But myself, growing up trained to lip-read pretty well with the aid of using hearing aids, I was able to have some efforts to get some information from one person before or after the players' meeting. It sucks sometimes. I do prefer sign languages as my mode of communication.
I do rather to have the hearing players to be quiet and stand still when I'm on the tee pad. I CAN hear noises (not words, just sounds of people's voices/laughers/etc.) and can SEE any distractions coming from the players unless I turn off my hearing aids but I rather not to do that everytime I'm at the tee pads. I do wear hearing aids to help me to hear how loud the discs are hitting at either the baskets or trees. You will know that your discs are screwed when you hear a very loud "WHACK!!" into the tree when you made bad driving shots as compared to a low quiet "THUD" or "CHING" sounds. You know? Still, I have to pay FULL attention to where my discs are going anyway. Also, it helps me to know someone yelling "HEY!" when they find my discs or to get my attention from behind.
When I am meeting new players at the tournaments, they are usually very understanding and friendly with me. I had to let the group know that I am deaf and they need to face me to allow me to lip-read them (TIPS, don't speak too fasssst or too slowwww, we are not that dumb or retarded) or sometimes I pull out the notepad and pencil for them to write down. Most of the times, we were able to get by without needing any knowledge of sign languages or using paper/pencil methods at all. Most of hearing players that I have met seem to have very good common senses on gesturing and body/facial expressions that are either funny or good. One guy in my local club does not know any signings but gives great gesturing acts that anyone in the world can understand him.
I am not being crybaby about lack of interpreters for the deaf players at both local clubs and small tournaments games. It is to be expected anyway but it would be nice to have one if it's at national or world tournaments. I mostly prefer that the hearing players to be more aware and be courteous to let the deaf players know what is going on. I noticed that we, deaf people, are the last to know what's going on anywhere.
Deaf players do have their own Deaf Disc Golf tournaments around the US and do host annual Deaf Nationals but the numbers of players' outcomes are small but we don't care about that because it was great fun for us to gather and to interact as well. One hearing volunteer at 2006 Deaf National at Paw Paw courses stated that these deaf events are so much nicer and peaceful than the hearing events, which are loud and crowded with some rude players.
There was a huge explosive of interest in disc golfing in the deaf communities in the mid 1990's (I was one of them) and it has started to grow a lot and formed its own local deaf disc golf organizations across US and we hope that it will continue to grow some more with additional helps from the hearing disc golf communities. We do have our own deaf "PDGA" which is DDGA (Deaf Disc Golf Association),
www.ddga.org which is currently in process of updating new website design.
As for lack of closed captioning/subtitles, I have already emailed to PDGA, Discraft, Innova, and Marshall Street about their DVD/YouTube videos not being captioned or subtitled and they all simply replied with bunch of apologies and giving no promises to look into it. I really liked to learn a lot from all those videos that I have saw but I don't FREAKING understand what Mark Ellis are saying about that awesome forehand driving shots or what Ken Climo are saying about making putting shots or what PDGA/MSt's tournament announcements are saying…. *sigh* I was lucky enough to attend Scott Stokely's clinic at Chili Disc Golf (Baker Farm, Rochester, NY) couple years ago and had a hearing friend to take notes for me while I was watching Scott making amazing long driving shots by just standing there with no running or x-steps at all!
The overall of my experiences as deaf disc golfer for more than 12 years, I am glad that I have joined the right sport which is easy for me to get along with very cool, open-minded, and friendly players who have the same interests in flying discs, environments, chilling, and promoting disc golf rather than ball golf which I think is very silly to pay high tee cost and to use a long $400 metal stick to hit a tiny white ball out to a huge overkill tree-razed fairway courses and carry giant golf bag and driving the golf cart around which I think is the most fun part of golfing.
I can go on and on and on about my experiences but I think my statement is enough for now…
