This weekend, Nyle DiMarco, winner of "America’s Next Top Model," posted on his Facebook page a viral compilation video of the reactions of Deaf people to his victory on the reality TV show. Nyle DiMarco is the first Deaf, second male, and one of few openly sexually fluid individuals to hold such a title – let alone to make such a significant breakthrough in the modeling and entertainment industry. He becomes the last winner of the show as it concluded with this final Cycle 22, and his recent win has helped bring the challenges that the Deaf community to the forefront in unprecedented ways.

Making History: Nyle DiMarco becomes first deaf and last ever winner of America's Next Top Model.

Communication

Despite the recent rise of technology and alternative methods of correspondance, communication remains an obvious barrier for the Deaf community. Nyle, as most Deaf individuals do, communicates primarily through American Sign Language and lip reading, and the show documents his struggle in communication with his fellow contestants, photographers and supermodel host Tyra Banks. DiMarco recounts the additional difficulty of communicating during certain shoots, such as one in the dark and another during the filming of a music video.

Nyle's communication difficulty on the show is just a glimpse of the daily and frequent struggles for the Deaf community and those hard of hearing, which comprises an estimated 37 million Americans. Many are unaware that it wasn't until the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) sued Netflix in 2012 that the organization agreed to finish captioning 90 percent of its entire library by 2013 and 100 percent by 2014. DiMarco's advocacy brought attention to the fact that videos posted on the White House's Facebook page no longer provide closed captioning, and thus bars a significant portion of our society from understanding and communicating with videos from their own government. The question remains that if the White House does not lead by example and if our government has yet to reform, how many other important outlets, institutions, and programs will continue to inadequately serve those in need?

Isolation

Nyle’s inability to communicate with so many on the show brought forth an issue many in the Deaf and other communities with special needs experience: isolation. Nyle describes his social isolation on the show as one that took a significant mental toll on him, and one that still makes him cringe when he watches episode re-runs from the show. Though he acknowledges that his isolation helped make him more concentrated and driven to win, his experience and reflection highlights how we often facilitate isolation of individuals unlike ourselves, and how the Deaf and other communities face so many challenging barriers because of our society’s inability to adequately address their needs.

'Disabled' or enabled? Nyle formerly said that his use of American Sign Language (ASL) gave him an advantage over his competitors as it uniquely helped express himself using movement.

Resilience

Those that grow up differently from mainstream society often develop this characteristic – resilience – and is, unsurprisingly, one that Nyle and many other Deaf individuals claim central to their identity and growth. Nyle describes to E! Online of his experience on the show, "It was definitely difficult just because of my language deprivation that was there for two months—I felt isolated...but you just have to be resilient and have that resilience. When I won, all that weight was lifted." His hurdles growing up as a different individual helped not only make him resilient to failure, but also unaffected by negativity and understanding of ignorance. He tells Entertainment Weekly, "Being Deaf did not give me any hesitation to be a part of the show…In fact, I was thrilled. I saw it as an opportunity to not only become a supermodel, but to change the world's perspective on Deafness."

A New Platform: DiMarco now serves as a spokesperson for LEAD-K, a visual civil right movement to end the nationwide epidemic of language deprivation by promoting language equality.

Not ‘Disabled’

Nyle’s remarkable success itself demonstrates the unlimited ability of the Deaf community. However, society often likes to call these individuals ‘disabled’ or ‘hearing impaired’; deafness as a disability has even been the underlying premise of the education and rehabilitation of the Deaf for decades. Though such a societally ingrained mentality can be forgivable when presented today, it is something we must strive to change individually and societally. DiMarco tells People Magazine that the Deaf community hates being called ‘hearing impaired’, as if they are lacking in some way, when in reality, nothing is lacking; they are completely capable – just their needs are different.

From the moment Nyle became a contestant on "America’s Next Top Model," he changed what it meant to be Deaf and what it meant to be a model. But with his recent success, advocacy and desire to create change, many see this victory as one that will continue to bring unparalleled change and awareness about the Deaf and other communities with special needs, and the model aspires to do nothing less. "My goal is to change the world's perspective on deafness—that it's not actually a disability, but a culture in and of itself."