I suspect part of the reluctance to hire a deaf person is the safety issue – if there is a fire or a robbery or even a spill on the floor, it is harder to warn a deaf person of the danger.

A more important issue may be that fast food places don’t hire ‘cooks’; regardless of what position you are hired for you are trained on how to operate the cash register and are expected to be able to fill in taking customer orders in a pinch. Does the deaf guy get exempted from this? Not being required to deal with the idiot customers may seem like a ‘reasonable accomodation’ to the EEOC but I suspect the other workers would not be very happy about the deaf guy getting ‘special treatment’.