‘I was born deaf into a hearing family, but I have a deaf brother. I am fully signing deaf person. And my family learned to sign so I never had problems with communicating with my family. And I also went to a deaf school, so I had a lot of deaf friends at school. In the deaf community, there are a lot of people who are gay, lesbian, transgender. I wasn’t a huge problem, I wasn’t nervous to come out and tell people. People were very accepting straight away. My Mom, my dad, my friends, everything, they’ve been very accepting. So I’ve been lucky to have a community that’s so accepting of us. In Australia, the official language is English. And Auslan hasn’t been recognized as an official language of Australia. Deaf people in Australia are lobbying for sign language, for Australian sign language to become an official language of Australia, to be taught in schools, to improve awareness of sign language, so that deaf people have more access in future. Bilingualism is a human right, meaning that deaf people can access everything in English and sign language. And then sign language being their native language.’ – CJ, 2013