In any society, a voice is more than sound; it is the means to be heard, to belong, to claim one’s rights. But for China’s estimated 27.8 million Deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals, that voice is too often out of reach. Many grow up without formal sign language instruction, without interpreters, and without the literacy skills the legal system and even daily life assume every citizen possesses. 

In a world built on language, they remain unseen and unheard.

Losing access to language means losing access to much more: education, employment, justice, and even the sheer possibility of being understood. For many in China’s Deaf community, everyday interactions become uphill battles, from explaining an illness at a clinic to reporting a crime at a police station. I saw this firsthand with Huan.

On a humid summer afternoon, I traveled for hours to a remote police station to meet Huan. She had been scammed out of 10,000 yuan, but the harder part was telling her story. She couldn’t read or write, and her sign language, a mix of local gestures, made every exchange slow and uncertain. At first, she kept her distance, answers vague, questions circling. But weeks of detours through alleyways and persistent follow-up slowly built trust. She began sharing more: the divorce she rarely spoke of, the daughter she hadn’t seen in years, and the way she avoided thinking about her child because it hurt too much.

That day, we were there for one final step to see if the police would accept her case. In China, even a straightforward filing is never guaranteed, and Deaf complainants are often dismissed most easily. Before this trip, I had already called three other police stations, each one passing the case along, citing lack of jurisdiction or the absence of sign language accommodations. Only after countless follow-up calls did the station nearest to Huan’s home agree to review the case.

At the station, I approached the officer on duty with our file in hand. I explained that the police on call had confirmed this was their jurisdiction and the officer had told me to bring the case here. From weeks of slow, careful conversations with Huan, I had pieced together every detail and translated them into a written record, along with the documents needed for filing. I laid the materials out one by one, answering questions, clarifying points, and pushing back gently when they hesitated.

But months of back-and-forth paid off: the case was formally accepted. Huan held the notice as if it might disappear, looking at it for a full minute. Then a smile unfolded across her face, soft and unhurried, the kind that lights slowly from within. Her eyes caught the afternoon light as she raised her hands to sign thank you, the movement steady and deliberate, as if she were pressing the words into the air so they would stay there.

Moments like that are hard-won. For many Deaf people in China, the barriers to being heard begin long before they ever reach a police station. Communication was the first and most stubborn obstacle.  As access to education remains limited and unequal for the Deaf community, over 75% of people with disabilities live in rural areas, far from the handful of specialized deaf schools concentrated in major cities. Without going to schools that teach official Chinese Sign Language (CSL), many Deaf children grow up without formal sign language education and use natural sign languages that develop organically within their communities. These natural signs can differ dramatically from CSL and from each other, leaving interpreters, especially those trained only in CSL, struggling to understand clients fully. Even with interpretation, meaning can be lost in subtle ways, especially when many concepts have no direct equivalent in sign.

For those who aim higher for education, the hurdles multiply. Deaf students must take the gaokao, China’s notoriously competitive college entrance exam, but only a handful of universities nationwide accept Deaf applicants. To even sit for the test, many must travel long distances at their own expense, a cost many rural families cannot afford. For parents already struggling, the choice is brutal but common: withdraw their child from school and send them to work, often in factories, rather than pursue an education that feels financially and structurally out of reach.

These early disadvantages ripple through adulthood. With limited education, Deaf individuals face restricted employment opportunities, most often confined to low-wage, manual labor. Few have the chance to enter white-collar professions that society deems more “respectable.” Without education as a foundation, asserting one’s rights in the workplace, in healthcare, or in court becomes nearly impossible. For many, the struggle is not only to find a job but to keep it in a world where communication itself is seen as a liability.

The same barriers that shut Deaf people out of classrooms and workplaces also shadow them in the legal system. Police and court officials sometimes push cases away, citing jurisdictional issues or procedural technicalities. In reality, these deflections often come from the extra time and effort required to work through interpretation. I’ve witnessed cases where the back-and-forth of communication led to visible impatience from officials, making clients even more hesitant to speak. Without accountability, interpreters, who are essential to the process, operate without regulation. I’ve heard accounts of mistranslations left uncorrected simply to move proceedings along, and even of interpreters accepting bribes to skew testimony.

Yet the Deaf community in China is not defined solely by these struggles. I’ve met Deaf individuals who graduated from university, worked as engineers, traveled abroad, and organized community events. One man, who had spent two years in Dubai, uses international sign language and now mentors others in his community. For those of us who hear, the task is not to look down with pity, but to stand alongside — recognizing Deaf people as equals with voices of their own, not as subjects in need of saving.

Justice, in theory, applies to everyone. But without communication access, it’s a promise written in invisible ink. For China’s Deaf community, true justice requires more than legal rights on paper: it requires the patience to listen across languages, the willingness to slow down, and the infrastructure to ensure that every story can be told in full. As I learned working alongside Deaf clients, justice begins with empathy, and with the belief that every voice, spoken or signed, deserves to be heard.