I completely agree. I'm very lucky because I can lip read really well. BUT, that doesn't make me hearing. I have absolutely NO hearing left whatsoever so I rely entirely on lip reading (writing, sign, etc.) but I know some other Deafies aren't able to lip read as well, or sometimes at all, and I can't imagine how irritating that must be.
I don't know if I would mandate an entire semester of ASL because then they would have to take a semester of all other languages in that area. However, I do think they should create a class directed to emergency workers and certain other business workers. I think they should have to learn the basic signs such as 'help, hurt, lost, etc.' And OF COURSE the alphabet (even if nothing else). Along with that I think they should have to learn the very basics of Deaf Culture and Deaf Communication Skills basically just the little things like facing someone while talking, making sure there is light if it's dark out, how to get their attention without thinking we are ignoring them, just things like that. The sad thing is, learning just the very basics like this could be taught in a one day to a one week class.
A couple years ago I was pulled over for having tinted windows (I had a prescription for it). Apparently he had been behind me for a little while and I never noticed. I usually use my mirrors a LOT but I wasn't feeling well that day and I think I was just in my own little world. He never put his sirens on (which I usually use by feeling the vibrations) because he had seen my licence plate frame that says, "Smile! Deaf Driver." So, the cop knows I'm deaf, he sees the plate frame and yet when he gets to the window he starts talking fast, talking while looking down and writing, looking around and not facing me, and then he would get upset when I asked him to repeat, slow down, or sometimes not even reply because I had no idea he had said something. It was almost like he couldn't understand the word 'Deaf' no matter how many times I said it even though he had understood it from my plate.
I've had many situations where if they had just know the basic alphabet or the basic understanding of how to communicate with someone who is D/HH, things could have been done so much easier and faster. Hopefully somethings will be done about this eventually. We're not asking them to become fluent in a whole other languages. We're just asking that they learn the basics of our languages that we've done with theirs.
[By the way, I'm late-deafened and I don't mean any disrespect by that last sentence since I wasn't born or raised deaf. However, I was raised and around cultureally Deaf people and had become Deaf in the Deaf Community even while I was hearing. They never saw me as hearing. Now that I've lost my hearing I and everyone else in the Deaf Community around here considers me Deaf. I just wanted to clarify, I'm not trying to upset anyone else since I am late-deafened.]