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> because certain conditions (e.g. being shorter than average), while limiting your physical abilities, are not disabilities because society generally provides for those conditions and extends equal access

This doesn't make them not disabilities, it just makes them disabilities with societal affordances. Even if we accept what you're saying here, these people are still less able to do things in the world, because much of the world doesn't provide those affordance, so they're restricted to the places that do.

Even in those places, there are still limits to the affordances provided - even people have the idea that in the US, employers can't discriminate against disabled people, they absolutely can if the disability affects their ability to do the job. Warehouse jobs routinely discriminate against those who can't lift 50 pounds as a matter of policy.

> And human beings are complex — a person who has found culture and meaning as a member of the Deaf community may disagree with you that they are "objectively worse off" for not having hearing, despite the obstacles.

I hear the argument, and I don't necessarily disagree that people find meaning from these kinds of communities. Nonetheless, there's a difference in that a hearing person is still able to find community (though obviously not the exact same community) but can also hear, while a deaf person can only do one of those two things.

When I was a kid in school, the phrase "differently abled" was in vogue, and it always seemed sort of ridiculous. It's not like you get other abilities for being deaf or having a missing leg or being paralyzed - you just have fewer. The only example I can think of where the phrase is really appropriate is for people with autism, who often are better than non-autistic people at some tasks as a result of their autism.

> we shy away from encouraging conversion therapy or height extension surgery by default

Because these things are dangerous and ineffective. You can point to clear negative consequences that come from doing them at a mass scale. Again, I go back to the idea of "different, not worse". Being gay is not the absence of straightness, and being short is not the absence of tallness. But being deaf is the absence of hearing. You just get less.

> This article I think does a good job of explaining the quandary of a parent faced with a "fix" for a condition that is challenging but through which people have developed identity and culture

You could say the same of cancer, but a fix would be very appreciated. Anything that makes people's lives worse will create a community, but I don't think this is an argument against resolving that problem. What's contradictory about this is that these people saying the solution is bad also demand their problem be fixed. They just say that the fix should be implemented at a global scale. Instead of a simple implant that restores hearing, they want the entire world to be made accessible to people without hearing. If this was fully achieved, it would have the same effect as restoring their hearing. There would be no struggle, there would be no community. Being deaf would be just as unusual as being short. Yet I've never heard opposition to making things more accommodating to deaf people. Essentially, their issue isn't with the problem being solved, but that this solution to the problem is too effective.

> Many disabled people and experts on disability see it as socially constructed

They are wrong. Even without society, the disability would exist. The only social construct is the threshold for how badly something needs to affect you before it is considered a disability. While it's true that we can, through science, reduce the degree to which a disability affects a person to the point it falls below that threshold, this is just curing disability. The fact that a disease can be cured doesn't make it a social construct. The only real point to be had here is that the word "disabled" is a social construct, but this is a meaningless statement. All words are social constructs. That's just how words work.

Are people who wear glasses disabled? They have an impairment that can prevent them from full participation in work, family, social life. But they also have an accessible accommodation that mitigates most of the practical consequences of their impairment.

The impairment doesn't go away, but the extent to which is it disabling is a function of the individual's relationship to society. Two people with the same impairment can have different degrees of disability based on accommodation. We can both have bad vision but if I can afford glasses and you can't, only one of us is disabled by it.

This is the social model of disability, it's a well established framework that has had immense practical value in the medical treatment of a huge range of disability, including adhd and hearing loss. It's so so shitty to dismiss it as "they are wrong" when you clearly don't even know the absolute basics of the history and practice of this field.

> but the extent to which is it disabling is a function of the individual's relationship to society

No it's not. It's a function of the person's relationship to glasses. The same way deaf people are no longer disabled when you restore their hearing. The only difference is that we can all obviously see that depriving children of glasses for the sake of forming a "blind community" is an utterly ridiculous thing to do.

What I'm saying is that there are two different cures for deafness. The first is to engineer a world in which it is not necessary to hear, and the second is to restore the individual's hearing. I am of the belief that there is no substantive difference between these two methods as it relates to the argument being made against cochlear implants. Of the two different cures, that is more effective which is the soul issue people take with it.

> This is the social model of disability, it's a well established framework that has had immense practical value in the medical treatment of a huge range of disability, including adhd and hearing loss.

The conclusion they reach is that a disability can be treated by altering the environment of the person with it. I reach this same conclusion without the need to reference some abstract "society" which causes all these problems.

> It's so so shitty to dismiss it as "they are wrong" when you clearly don't even know the absolute basics of the history and practice of this field.

Well they are wrong. If you find the truth to be shitty, I suggest you bury your head in the sand.

Man what do you want to use as shorthand for the entity that produces hearing aids, glasses, wheelchairs, and medicine? And describes why some people have access to them and some don’t? I'm open to a novel nomenclature here I'm just pointing out that there already is an established framework for talking about and thinking about this stuff we could use instead.

Obviously not "society". I've yet to hear of anyone purchasing a pair of glasses from society. When disability advocates refer to society as cause of disability, they are not talking about specific individuals or corporations, but the wider commonalities between individuals and organisations.

Hearing people by definition can do something that deaf people cannot: HEAR SOUND.

Being able to hear is basically a superpower if you are deaf.