There was a deaf competitor on my daughter’s swim team years ago, and what the school did was have a hearing teammate stand behind him and when the start buzzer went off, she tapped his ankle. It worked very well, brought a tear to my eye (as I’m all-but-deaf too), and didn’t cost the school a penny to implement.
I have no problem with a situation such as the one you descibed, where a common sense approach was used, the risk of injury to the child or others was no greater than with any other student, and little or no cost was invovled. However, like everything else the government does, this initiative is going to carry things to the extreme, requiring significant resources and oversight that the school districts cannot afford. Also, what will be the legal ramifications be if someone gets hurt?