Idea of the Day (or month, really.)

It's been a while, so why not do a story prompt?  People seem to like these, and so I like to post them fairly often.  This is actually one I've been considering using myself, though I don't know that I'll get the time, considering how many books I WANT to write and how few I actually can.

Idea of the Day: Deaf magic.  Only people who are deaf from birth can use some special power in this world.

One of the grand traditions in sf/fantasy is to take something that many would consider an ailment or hindrance, and turn those select people into a source of reverence or power in society.  One of my favorite examples of this is where Orson Scott Card made people with OCD into religious figures on a certain planet in Xenocide. 

This theme has always fascinated me, as does the nature of the deaf community.  They have a very special sort of relationship with one another, one that I don't think a hearing person could quite grasp.  Their world would seem alien to me, and yet for many deaf people, they prefer not to think of their situation as a handicap.'  Rather, it is simply the way they are, and it gives them access to a community that is their own.

I wonder if there would be a way one could play this up and enhance it in a fantastical world, making a magic that only those who cannot hear can use.  Either it causes great crashes of sound to which they are immune, or it requires 'hearing' in a way that people who aren't deaf are to distracted to notice or touch.