Audism describes the mentality that to be able to hear and to speak is necessarily better and leads to a higher quality of life. On this basis, different forms of discriminating behavior against deaf and hard of hearing people may arise^{[citation needed]}. Audism can manifest in different areas of life, done mostly by hearing people. It can also occur within the Deaf Community as some deaf or hard of hearing person attempts to shares the attitude of being hearing is better. It is this mentality that led Tom L. Humphries to coin the term in his doctoral dissertation in 1975. He defined it as the attitude that people who hear and speak (or hear and speak better) or have excellent English skills, are superior to others. The definition has since expanded to include discriminating behaviors^{[citation needed]}.

Chad Taylor (born November 24, 1970 in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.) is a guitarist in the bands The Gracious Few and Live. Live have sold over 20 million records, including the 8x platinum album Throwing Copper.

Chad is a founding member of the band Live and has appeared on all their albums to date. He met his future Live band mates aged 13 in middle school in York, Pennsylvania. When vocalist Ed Kowalczyk left the band in 2009, Taylor formed the band The Gracious Few along with Patrick Dahlheimer and Chad Gracey of Live and Kevin Martin and Sean Hennesy from the band Candlebox. They released their debut album The Gracious Few in 2010. Taylor has acted as spokesperson for Live since Kowalczyk's departure and in 2011 announced their intention to record new material with an as yet unnamed new lead singer.

Taylor has produced records for other artists, including the 1996 album Happily Ever After by Solution A.D. and Play the Piano Drunk, the debut EP of his brother Adam Taylor.

Chad is a principal partner in the company Aurora Creative Group, which has developed shows for The History Channel, Discovery Channel, Telemundo, Food Network, HBO and Speed Channel. In addition he co-produced the feature films Home and Another Harvest Moon and was executive producer of the video The Barkan Method: Hot Yoga which features his wife Lisa.

Deaf culture describes the social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values and shared institutions of communities that are affected by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label, the word deaf is often written with a capital D, and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d.

Members of the Deaf community tend to view deafness as a difference in human experience rather than a disability.

The community may include family members of deaf people and sign-language interpreters who identify with Deaf culture and does not automatically include all people who are deaf or hard of hearing. According to Anna Mindess, "it is not the extent of hearing loss that defines a member of the Deaf community but the individual's own sense of identity and resultant actions." As with all social groups that a person chooses to belong to, a person is a member of the Deaf community if he or she "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community."