Deaf People On Reality Shows - a trend?

Did my job. Now it's your turn. You can vote for Greg Gunderson to be one of the 15 professional race car drivers for the upcoming TV reality racing show called "Racin for a Living." If Greg gets enough votes (click here to go to the voting page and vote for Greg Gunderson - voting ends on July 31. You can vote as often as you can), he'll become the first deaf driver to compete in the upcoming reality show in 2007.

Now, Greg Gunderson would not be the first deaf person on a reality show. There were other deaf people who were (or are) on reality shows. Just like Matt Hamill who is now currently the first ever deaf MMA fighter ever to compete on the TUF3 (The Ultimate Fighter #3) reality show which is ongoing with 10 episodes left to go on Spike TV. Then we have the Vardon family with the deaf Mom and Dad along with their two hearing sons (one is austic) who were on the Extreme Home Makeover show back in August of 2004 with Marlee Matlin making a surprise visit at the end of the show. And then we have Christy Smith who became the first ever deaf person to be on any reality shows back in 2003 on a show called "Survivor."

Is there a trend going on here? We seems to be getting one deaf competitors on a reality show a year (except for 2005 which there weren't any, I believe). Are viewers likely to be more sympathic and supportive of deaf competitors or deaf people on reality shows? Are producers of reality shows starting to see that having deaf people on reality shows could actually boost their ratings? With 28 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States, that might be a reason why. But only about a fraction of that are people fluent in sign language that could easily relate to deaf competitors with signing ability on competition reality shows. Even if it's a fraction of the total deaf and hard of hearing population, that is still a good enough to boost the show's ratings. Either way, people watching reality shows tend to root for the underdogs, and if there is an identifiable deaf competitor(s) on the show, then viewers are more likely to favor the little guy. Just don't say that to Matt Hamill.