Some Fast Facts about Hearing Impairment and ASL

• More than 15 million people in the United States have a hearing loss of some degree.

• Nearly 2 million people in the United States are considered deaf.

• Approximately 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.

• Sign language was created by deaf people to communicate with each other. It is their natural language.

• Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet founded the first school for deaf people in the United States in 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut.

• The only liberal arts college for deaf students in the world is Gallaudet College, located in Washington, D.C.

• The native language used by the deaf community in the United States is American Sign Language (ASL). ASL has its own unique word order and rules of grammar, different from those of English.

• Some signs are natural gestures, while others resemble the actual concept they represent.

• ASL is the 4th most commonly used language in the United States, after English, Spanish, and Italian.

Nicole Cohen MS CF-SLP