Honestly, I think there are limits on creative license. And writing about deaf characters from a deaf point of view when the writer is hearing and has no/little previous real life experience to deafness is one of them. No matter how much research you do, no matter how sensitive you treat the subject, in your writing, you will invariably come across a situation where you don't know how the deaf character is supposed to act (or you are unaware), and so you invent sometime, because that's what creative license is about. The problem is, it will be faulty and inaccurate. What does a deaf character feel when he goes into a bar and cannot understand anyone? You just have to be deaf to understand!
My personal opinion is to just leave it to us writers who are deaf and hoh to write about our experience.
Just about every story or book I've ever read about a deaf character (when written from the deaf point of view) is inaccurate. In some cases the damage that results to readers' perception of deafness is minimal; in some cases it is devastating.
