Current discussions in the area of inclusive education stress the necessity for schools to develop equitable responses to diversity if all students are to be active and participating learners (Clark et al. 1995; Booth et al. 2000; Black-Hawkins, 2002; Florian, 2005; Humphrey et al. 2006). Appreciation of diversity moves learning communities away from the notion of normalization, which promotes ‘sameness’, and views difference as a negative attribute (Florian, 2005). The teaching strategies employed in schools must not become barriers to participation for learners with different needs (Sapon-Shevin et al. 1994).

Until relatively recently, deafness was  seen as simply a physical impairment: the absence of hearing  (Butler, Skelton & Valentine, 2001; Lane, 1997). In the past, much discrimination against Deaf people was based on the assumption that they were in fact people without language  (Davis, 2007). This approach  ignored the fact that deafness is an unique kind of disability. There is a Deaf-World, a relatively small group of visual people ( Padden & Humphries, 1988) who use a natural visual-gestural language. Children and adults who cannot hear are isolated from the mainstream because communication with hearing individuals will always be laborious (Butler, Skelton & Valentine, 2001; Dolnick, 1993; Fletcher, 1988; Foster, 1988; Marschark, 1993; Padden & Humphries, 1988; Wilcox, 1989).

From sociological and anthropological perspective, deafness, unlike other disability types, works as a linguistic and cultural communities forming factor. According to Tajfel (978) cultural communities acknowledge that certain socially constructed group characteristics with specific cognitive content distinguish them from their social surroundings. In this regard, Deaf community is not just one group of people with disabilities among others, but also a linguistic and cultural minority, whose members use sign language as a primary means of communication, behave in a similar manner and share similar beliefs (Padden 1989).

National minority is another type of minority cultural community, „a group of citizens of a State, constituting a numerical minority and in a non-dominant position in that State, endowed with ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics which differ from those of the majority of the population, having a sense of solidarity with one another, motivated, if only implicitly, by a collective will to survive and whose aim is to achieve equality with the majority in fact and in law" (Deschénes 1985:24).

 In the case of Deaf belonging to ethnic-national minorities, there is a coincidence, a combination of the two mentioned types of culturally rooted disadvantage, which is generating multiple exclusions.  First, within the society based on the hearing culture, they form a Deaf cultural minority using the sign language as the most important mean of intra-community communication. Second, as ethnic-national minority members, they differ culturally and linguistically from the members of the Deaf community belonging to the dominant ethnic-national community. Third, as Deaf, they represent a marginal group also within the ethnic-national minority to which they belong.

Within the interpretations framework outlined above, in my paper I discuss the situation of Deaf people born to the Hungarian minority ethnic-national community living in Bihor County (Romania), focusing on the following main research questions: what are in their case the main factors generating educational exclusion and inequality of chances?  In what ways these factors are related to the social status and perception of Deaf people, their belonging to the Deaf culture and the ethnic-national identity of the Deaf community members? What kind of strategies aimed at identity preservation and attenuating educational and social exclusion are employed by the members of the group? How can the values related to ethnic-national identity preservation be integrated in the public policy programs aimed at educational inclusion?

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