Does Deaf mean Disabled?

While reading Shattering the Silence , a publication of Silent Blessings Deaf Ministries, I started thinking about this particular subject.

Most d/Deaf people don’t consider being deaf a disability or something from which they should be healed. In Exodus 4:11 God tells us He makes a man deaf or mute. Perceiving being deaf as somewhat abnormal is like thinking having blond hair or being short is not normal. We would think it odd if professional basketball players thought that being ‘only’ five feet eight inches tall was a disability. God made us the way we are. Being deaf is not a sickness or a disability.

But didn’t Jesus heal d/Deaf people? Mark 9:25 seems to confirm that He did. But was this a healing or a demonstration of His power to radically change a person? Back then did being deaf have such a negative stigma that Jesus chose to make the deaf hear and the blind see so they could live in an unaccepting society?

Jesus, as the Son of God, would not heal a characteristic that Jesus as the Creator (Colossians 1:16) produced in a person. However, it would certainly be within the right of Jesus as the Creator to change a physical characteristic of any of His creation.  One person has blue eyes; another is deaf. God created both of them.