It is said that being different is part of life, but as with many of these "parts of life," there are two extremes on the spectrum of society: being able to hold your own and depending on society to hold your hand every step of the way. Many people may suspect that the latter group is made up of lazy, immature, and incompetent people. Though a certain percentage of these people may fit that description to a "t," there are more than a few who are unable to control the characteristic(s) that place them in that group.
The human body has been well equipped with five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste, most of which are vital to one's survival. If one of the essential senses were to abruptly disappear, one's everyday world would be turned upside down and dropped into a pool of chaos: everything familiar is suddenly strangely different and unknown.
It seems that blindness and deafness are the two most often occurring "sense handicaps." This being a common viewpoint, there has been much research done in the areas of defining what causes the disabilities, how to treat those that suffer from them, and, most importantly, how to help them adapt and assimilate to a world of people with the ability to hear and see.
The choice of being blind or being deaf would be rather easy, once one realizes that, "The real problem with blindness is not the lack of eyesight. The real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of information which exist. If a blind person has proper training and opportunity, blindness is only a physical nuisance." (National Federation of the Blind) Although blindness and deafness are both life altering disabilities, the blind are thought to be able to live a life that lets them become part of society, not form their own world. With services such as Canine Companions for Independence (CCI,) that train dogs specifically for blind people according to the amount of help they need.