 Hearing people may use the term "hearing-impaired", perhaps thinking it is more polite than "deaf", but Deaf people tend to reject it, for a variety of reasons.It is more likely to be used for people with a mild or moderate hearing loss or for people who have acquired deafness in adulthood rather than by those who have grown up Deaf.By contrast, those who identify with the Deaf culture movement typically reject the label hearing-"impaired" and other labels that imply that deafness is a pathological condition, viewing it instead as a focus of pride.