MorriganTait

Heath - 7 Million ASL users? What are you smoking?

Try Galludet University's site for a bit mor accurate information.

"Across all age groups, approximately 600,000 people in the United States (0.22% of the population, or 2.2 per 1,000) are "deaf;" more than half are over 65 years of age. About 6,000,000 people (2.2%) report having "a lot of trouble" hearing with, again, more than half over 65 years of age. Over 28,000,000 people (10%) report having "a little trouble" hearing with just less than a third over 65 years of age, but more than half over 45 years of age. Altogether, more than 35,000,000 people (13%) report some degree of hearing trouble. Again, we emphasize that these estimates are based upon self-reported (or informant-reported) hearing trouble and not on independent audiometric measurements."

Lets say ALL the deaf and 1/100th of the hoh people use ASL. That comes to 600,000 + 28,000 + 35,000 = 663,000 in the US. Let's say for each deaf/hoh ASL user there are two hearing ASL users (yeah, right, its more like 10 deaf to 1 hearing ASL user) - that's 663,000 X 3 = 1,989,000 and let's say Canada has exactly the same number (though thier population is much lower than US and much of the country speaks French, not English, so ASL would be useless) That's still only = 3,978,000 which is shy of 4 million. Cripes - you need to go back and take some math classes.

How many people are "Deaf" and how many use ASL?

For the last several years, many writers have distinguished between those who are deaf and those who are "Deaf." The capitalization indicates sociolinguistic affiliation in addition to audiological distinction. None of the above federal survey activity inquires about special language use or social identification among those who are deaf (or hard of hearing). That is, there are no questions about American Sign Language (ASL) or any other signed language use on federal surveys. The only study that helps to answer this question was done over 30 years ago (before IDEA, ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, etc.). Based upon this old survey (part of a project known as the National Census of the Deaf Population [NCDP]), we first estimated there may have been 500,000 persons who signed at home in 1972 (about 0.24% of the population), only slightly over half of whom were deaf (280,000 or 0.14% of the population). In other words, in 1972, a little more than 1 of every 1,000 people in the United States was a deaf person who reported s/he was a "good" signer.

However, if we were to take a more liberal view of who would have counted as an ASL user among those responding to the NCDP then, of course, our numerical estimates would be higher. That is, including those NCDP respondents who identified themselves as “fair” or “poor” signers results in an estimated 642,000 persons who signed at home in 1972, more than half of whom were deaf (375,000 or 0.19% of the population). These and other estimates are discussed at greater length elsewhere:

Mitchell, Ross E., Travas A. Young, Bellamie Bachleda, and Michael A. Karchmer. 2006, in press. "How Many People Use ASL in the United States? Why Estimates Need Updating." Sign Language Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3.

There is really no way to know if the proportion of deaf signers in 1972 has stayed close to the same over the last few decades. Certainly, the medical, legal, social, economic, and educational circumstances for Americans who are deaf have changed significantly since the NCDP. Nonetheless, if the proportion of deaf signers has remained roughly the same, then they would continue to number in the hundreds of thousands today (360,000 to 517,000). Please keep in mind that this final estimate is just that, an estimate (and a very rough one at that), and is not based on any new data.