CADRE Resources

This document does not offer formal policy guidance from the Office of Special Education Programs at the United States Department of Education.

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Ideas that Work, U.S. Office of Special Education Programs

Consortium for Appropriate Dispute Resolution (CADRE)

Considerations for Mediating with People Who Are Culturally Deaf

Annette Leonard, Deb Duren, and John Reiman

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Historically, mediation has not been an effective venue for dispute resolution for Deaf people because of linguistic inaccessibility and cultural non-recognition. Like other linguistic minority groups who experience and resolve conflict in a manner consistent with their social and communicative norms Deaf people have some unique perspectives. The following article illuminates some of these perspectives and explains how mediators can address these differences when working with Deaf people, in order to make mediation a more linguistically and culturally respectful and responsive endeavor. A CADRE Publication. This document was published in September 2002. For more information on IDEA 2004, please click here.

Considerations for Mediating with people who are culturally deaf.pdf